Tuesday Apr 01, 2025
Tuesday Apr 01, 2025
Monday, 24 March 2025 03:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Lando Norris says he and McLaren are “ready” to cope with the tension of an internal fight for the world championship between himself and teammate Oscar Piastri.
The Australian made it two wins from two for McLaren this year with a dominant victory in Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix, leading Norris over the line for the team’s first one-two of the season.
Piastri’s win moves him 10 points behind Norris in the championship following the Briton’s impressive win in the season-opener in Melbourne last weekend, where Piastri finished ninth.
Norris said: “We were free to race. We’re both excited – probably nervous and excited at the same time – as I’m sure the team will be. But we’re ready.”
Norris emphasised his and Piastri’s determination to deal with the situation in a manner that is respectful both to each other and to McLaren’s overall philosophy of letting the drivers race while putting the team’s interests first.
“As much as we work together and we have a good time and enjoy ourselves, we both know we want to try and beat each other and show who’s best. And that’s inevitable,” said Norris. “So there’s no point trying to hide away from that fact or make something of it.
“We’re two competitors who both want to win. But we help each other out. I think we both achieved something better this weekend because of that fact. And we’ll continue to do that.”
After a win and a pole for each of the McLaren drivers in 2025, the car is the class of the field at this early stage of the season.
McLaren are choosing to ignore the claim of Mercedes driver George Russell, who finished third in China, that they could win every race this season. Team Principal Andrea Stella described that as “just distractions that we don’t take.”
For now, Piastri is in fourth place in the championship, with Russell and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in between him and his teammate.
McLaren are aware of the possibility that the competition between Norris and Piastri is likely to become a title fight this season, whether or not other drivers remain involved. McLaren’s philosophy, in a nutshell, is one of fairness. The drivers are allowed to race but they must not risk each other’s cars or damage the team’s interests. McLaren believe that running a team this way encompasses one key advantage that overrides the potential downsides – the drivers benefit from each other’s competitiveness. And they say this was on show in Shanghai.
Piastri said: “We’ve got different strengths and weaknesses as drivers. This weekend, there were certain points where it just worked a bit to my favour, naturally. There’s been other weekends where it definitely hasn’t, and I’ve had to try and look at things from how Lando’s driven and apply them myself.”
In the case of China, Norris’ issue was that the McLaren was suffering from understeer – a lack of front grip. It’s a natural feature of the track, but one that for Norris was exacerbated by the McLaren car’s individual behaviour.
No driver likes understeer. But, as Stella put it, it was “more of a penalty for Lando, given his driving style and the way he wants to generate lap time.”
“I hate understeer,” Norris said. “I just can’t drive a car with no front. I can, but I struggle. I cannot maximise the package that way.”
