McLaren boss Andrea Stella has responded to recent accusations that it is favouring one driver over another as its intra-team Formula 1 title battle nears its conclusion.
The Woking-based squad has seen the gap between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris narrow significantly, to the point where it is now Norris who leads the standings.
His win in Mexico City saw him reclaim the title lead for the first time since the Bahrain Grand Prix, having lost it to Piastri at the following round in Saudi Arabia.
The Australian has failed to win a race since Zandvoort, and in that tim,e both he and Norris have seen Max Verstappen creep closer towards the championship lead.
But Norris has managed to overturn his own deficit to his team-mate, and heading into this weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix, now harbours a one-point advantage.
With Piastri suffering an uncharacteristic drop in form, accusations have been made by F1 fans online – and by former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone – that Norris is being favoured.
When asked about how it has been to deal with ‘flashpoints’ and now with these accusations on top, Stella disagreed with both assertions, putting the latter down to “noise” that the team is shutting out.
“First of all, so far I’ve been lucky enough that we haven’t had many flashpoints at all,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“I think this is, like I said before, thanks to the fact that we have Lando and Oscar on board. We invest a lot right from day one with Lando and then day one with Oscar on setting up the relationship based on the concept of fairness, equality, sportsmanship and so on.
“This is always the angle that we adopt in our conversations. Definitely for me as well, it’s been a journey in terms of understanding all the subtleties that you need to take into account while managing this kind of mission, which is to preserve the way we go racing while letting them race, which is what we were trying to do and embracing the difficulties that come with that.
“I’ve always tried to look at the facts. I focus on the facts. I talk about the facts. Facts is the foundation of all the conversations I’ve had, including the drivers. We try to make sure that what is noise is very well distinguished from what is factual.
“There’s a lot of noise. Formula 1 is a very popular sport. We all like to talk about sport. I do like to talk about football. I’ve become the best manager in the world of football, so I know that this is normal.
“But it’s important that you extract what is factual and you base and you keep everyone focused on the facts.”
Stella recognises similarities between 2025 and 2007 F1 three-way title battles
One of the primary concerns of outsiders is that both McLaren drivers will cancel each other out and enable the third contender – in this case, Verstappen – in and eventually win.
Stella knows this scenario all too well, having been part of the Ferrari team that saw Kimi Raikkonen overhaul both Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton – both McLaren – in 2007, and in 2010, when Alonso – now a Ferrari driver – lost out to Sebastian Vettel.
“Like I said before, we always take a look at history,” he said. “We try to understand what has happened, what are the lessons learned.
“In 2007, there’s another interesting one. Obviously, in 2010, we had a different outcome for myself. One we won, one we lost. In both cases, for instance, he was the driver that was third in the classification at the last race, that actually won the championship.
“This is an easy lesson that we see in every kind of sport, but never give up and never give anything for granted, which is very important.
“When we look back at 2007, obviously, we know that there’s been quite a lot of internal competition at McLaren. I was on the other side. Potentially, that competition went a little too far and we could say that racing led the victory to the third one of another team.
“Once again, this is a conversation we are having internally right now. We are having a conversation with Lando, with Oscar. Let’s make sure that the winner drives a papaya car.
“There’s a bigger interest for the team and even for yourself because we look at the future as well, not only the present. Let’s make sure that we collaborate as much as is sensible to do so between two drivers to make sure that the title is a papaya overall and a papaya car.
“There’s definitely a lot to pick from those days. There’s also something that you pick, which is in terms of the determination and in terms of the resilience that you need to have in this business. Nowadays, the season is 24 races. At the time, here is race 21.
“Everyone would be on holidays already. Here, we have still four events to go with one point separating the two drivers.
“The amount of resilience that is needed nowadays is certainly something that you better have practised a bit over time. Our drivers are relatively young, but we talk about resilience and managing fatigue as well.”
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