McLaren boss Andrea Stella has revealed that the team will now prioritise Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri in an aim to clinch both titles in the 2024 Formula 1 season.
The Woking-based squad’s reluctance to implement team orders has been in the spotlight since the decision not to impose them cost it a possible race win at Monza.
McLaren locked out the front row at the Italian Grand Prix, but Oscar Piastri’s opening-lap pass on Lando Norris enabled eventual winner Charles Leclerc to split them.
Norris stands as Max Verstappen’s nearest challenger in the Drivers’ Championship, 62 points behind, with Piastri another 44 points back with eight rounds remaining.
But while the gap between the top two is substantial, Red Bull’s worsening woes have made McLaren’s chances of taking a title clean sweep a more realistic prospect.
With McLaren having recognised that post-race, Stella has divulged that Norris will now begin to receive more support as he pursues a maiden Drivers’ Championship.
“The overall concept is we are incredibly determined to win, but we want to win in the right way,” Stella told the BBC.
He added: “We [will] bias our support to Lando but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles.
“Our principles are that the team interest always comes first. Sportsmanship for us is important in the overall way we go racing. And then we want to be fair to both drivers.”
Stella has admitted that the desire to avoid compromising the team’s result as Piastri’s robust overtake on his team-mate at Monza did has contributed to the change.
“What we don’t want to see any more is a situation like in Monza in which we enter a chicane P1/P2 and we exit P1/P3,” he said. “Because that is a detriment to the team.
“The team interests comes first and these are the situations that above all we need to fix because eventually, as a matter of fact,
the way we entered the race in Monza left the door open this situation.
“After Monza, three objectives: we need to make sure that anything that happens on track is not to the detriment of the team.
“Second objective, how do we win both championships, both drivers committed to help?
“But what we don’t want to do is win in a reckless way. Those are the three topics and they define the way we go racing in Baku. This will be updated after Baku.”
Stella has insisted that discussions over the topic with Piastri ended with the Australian being prepared to even relinquish victories should it grant Norris extra points.
“The conversations have been very collaborative,” he expressed.
“Even when I said to Oscar: ‘Would you be available to give up a victory?’ He said: ‘It’s painful, but if it’s the right thing to do now, I will do it’.
“Every driver is hard-wired to go for a victory. So I am always very impressed by the level of team spirit and maturity and collaboration that we found in this period.”
Stella would not be drawn on precise details about how McLaren’s principles will work, but he did disclose that each scenario will be dealt with on an individual basis.
Meanwhile, the Italian has stressed that Norris has agreed with McLaren’s wish to not divert Piastri into a clear second driver role and sacrifice his results at all times.
“Lando wants to win because he deserved the victory on track,” he added.
“It’s OK to be occasionally supported by your team-mate, but you don’t want to use, systematically, ways of adjusting the race just for the sake of the points when your team-mate is scoring in a way that he deserves. This is not the way McLaren want to win, or the way Lando wants to win.
“If I ask Lando, he would say: ‘I am comfortable if in Abu Dhabi [at the end of the season] I miss a few points that I could have got with some actions, but if those actions were not right at the time, then, you know what? We keep strong as a team, the team is stable and cohesive, we will give it a go next year’.”
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