McLaren suffered a blow at the Las Vegas Grand Prix with its double disqualification, as Max Verstappen closed to 24 points off Formula 1 world championship leader Lando Norris and drew level with Oscar Piastri.
Verstappen’s win, coupled with no points for the McLaren pair due to being disqualified for excessive plank wear, has cranked extra pressure on the Woking team ahead of the final two rounds.
So, should McLaren now favour Norris in the F1 title fight? Our writers have their say.
No, recent history makes it almost impossible to ask Piastri for a favour – Ronald Vording
Zak Brown made it very clear during a media lunch in Austin: as long as both McLaren drivers are within one race win (in other words, 25 points) of each other, there's essentially nothing to choose. Both Brown and Andrea Stella said it wouldn't be “fair” to tell one of their drivers they can no longer chase the dream while it’s still within reach.
The 2007 scenario was brought up frequently – both internally and in media appearances – but McLaren’s leaders acknowledged they'd be willing to take risks: “That’s how we go racing.”
At the time, these were answers to whether McLaren should back Piastri, since the Australian was still leading the championship. But what applied to Norris back then, should now apply to Piastri.
Moreover, it remains to be seen whether Piastri and his manager Mark Webber would even accept it if they were asked to play second fiddle. It’s a normal reaction when keeping recent history in mind. When Piastri was leading the championship, that support didn't come (with the benefit of hindsight, rightly so) but that makes it rather complex to ask the opposite now.
Granted, the threat from Verstappen is now greater than before, only 24 points behind, but that's also a relative thing. After all, Norris still has everything in his own hands. If he scores just two points more than Verstappen and Piastri in Qatar – a track that should suit McLaren – he will be crowned world champion. Help from the pitwall may not even be needed.
Yes, the most important thing for McLaren is that a papaya car wins the drivers’ title, but imposing things from above is something you can hardly justify given the past months.
Yes, it's time to play it safe - Oleg Karpov
There’s a limit to what McLaren can actually do when it decides to back one of its drivers. It’s not as if the team can take all the best parts from one car and fit them to the other – that’s not how modern F1 works. And even if the papaya camp now chooses to bet on Norris, it wouldn’t mean Piastri gets left with an older specification of front wing. There’s no need to slow him down – and if he simply outperforms his team-mate in the last two races, there’s not much the team can do. But I do believe it’s time to properly assess different scenarios – and identify the ones in which Norris should be given priority, for the simple reason that he is now better placed to bring McLaren its first drivers’ world title since 2008.
To an extent, it would also be fair. After all, he’s the one who retired in Zandvoort through a mechanical failure – and he’s the one who lost more points as a result of the Vegas disqualification. With 36 more points on the board, he’d be heading to Qatar as an overwhelming favourite, and Verstappen wouldn’t be a threat, even mathematically. To put it bluntly, McLaren owes that support to Lando – and Lando himself has earned it over the past few months, showing he’s the one more ready to handle the pressure of a championship fight. He is McLaren’s best driver right now – there’s simply no question about that.
To me, the most sensible thing McLaren can do right now is to set some ground rules for how to approach Qatar – and everything should revolve around a simple proposition: if at any point McLaren gets a chance to secure Norris’ title here and now, it should do everything possible to make it happen. Even if that means sacrificing the other car.
This year’s championship has shown that no gap is ever big enough – and even if Norris heads to Abu Dhabi with the same 24-point advantage over Max, McLaren would still be exposed to some freak circumstance that could leave it in tears. An incident at the start, another technical failure, a wheelnut where the thread strips – and it’s gone. Hoping Verstappen doesn’t win the final race is not a strategy.
So, there needs to be a discussion. And McLaren needs to make that clear to Piastri now, too: it is also because of his poor form that the team is at risk of losing the title to the Dutchman and Red Bull. He could have made this end of the season very easy for McLaren had he simply continued doing what he had been doing all year long before. But he didn’t – and now it’s time to accept that if there’s a chance his help is needed to secure the title for the team, he must cooperate.
It could be something as small as forcing Verstappen into a different strategy to help Norris get ahead. Or holding Max off for a couple of laps in some unusual scenario. There are very few situations in which Piastri can genuinely help – but if any of them would allow Norris to secure the title in Qatar, the team must ensure Oscar is ready to assist.
None of this means Piastri won't be allowed win the title anymore. If he is simply in a league of his own in Qatar, no one can take that away from him. But if he struggles again then there is no other choice. You don’t bet on a tired horse.
After Vegas, McLaren had to apologise to its fans and sponsors for what happened – now it needs to do everything possible to make sure it doesn’t let them down again. Scrap the papaya rules. Common sense must now prevail.
No, you just don’t do that to an F1 driver – Ben Vinel
There is a common, unspoken rule in F1: if both your drivers have mathematical title chances, a championship-contending squad doesn’t hand out team orders purposefully favouring one of them.
Asking a driver to give up on his admittedly slimmer title hopes is extremely damaging to both his self-esteem and his sense of belonging within the team. Just ask Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa how they feel about it – and they weren’t even realistic title contenders in 2002 and 2010 respectively.
Right now, Piastri is in a downward spiral, and everything points to Norris being McLaren’s best chance of winning the title.
But if the team denies the Australian a fair chance to fight – and you never know when a title chance will reoccur, if ever – then good luck getting him to swallow that pill.
If I were Stella or Brown, I’d rather lose the title than alienate one of the team’s best prospects for the next seasons just to give Norris a few more points… and still potentially lose the title.
No, McLaren still has the opportunity to seal the title without intervening – Filip Cleeren
I have gone back and forth on this a few times, but I think McLaren's situation will take care of itself. Norris is still the overwhelming favourite to win the title, and given McLaren's prowess on the hot and high-downforce Losail circuit, he has a great opportunity to seal it at the first time of asking.
Could Piastri help him out? In certain situations, yes, but I don't think McLaren will go for it because Piastri is still level on points with Verstappen, the only non-McLaren competitor in the fight. If Piastri had been a lot further behind then it would have been fair to ask him to help out. But right now he still has his own aspirations of beating the Dutchman - and he is only one problem for Norris away from being right back in the fight himself.
The fact that Qatar is McLaren's happy hunting ground will make it easier for the team to maintain its equal driver policy for at least one more round, and then we'll see what the outlook is ahead of Abu Dhabi. Should Piastri be mathematically eliminated by then, then it's obviously a different story.
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