Oscar Piastri says he stands by McLaren’s commitment to letting both its drivers fight for the world championship, even if it weakens their chances against Max Verstappen.
The McLaren driver holds a 13-point lead over team mate Lando Norris heading into the eighth round of the championship. But their rival Verstappen is just nine points behind Norris, and has won more races than anyone bar Piastri.Last year McLaren won the constructors’ championship while Verstappen took the drivers’ title. Piastri admitted “it is a possibility” that Verstappen could beat them to the drivers’ title this year, even while McLaren take the teams’ title.
However Piastri said both he and Norris want McLaren to give them an equal opportunity to win.
“On both sides of the garage here, we want to win because we’ve been the best driver, the best team, including against the other car in the team,” he told the BBC. “You always want to earn things on merit and you want to be able to beat everyone, including your team mates.
“So that gives Lando and I the best chance of our personal goals of trying to become drivers’ world champion, while also achieving the main result for the team, which is the constructors’ championship.”
Last year, when Norris was striving to overturn Verstappen’s substantial championship lead, McLaren waited until the latter stages of the season before using Piastri to aid his team mate. Piastri won the Hungarian Grand Prix ahead of Norris in July but let him through to win the sprint race at Interlagos four months later.
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Piastri said if either McLaren driver wins the championship this year, they want to know their team mate had the same chance to succeed.
“If we do get beaten by Max, of course that would hurt, but we would know that we both had the same opportunity, we were racing everybody out there and that’s just how it panned out,” he said.
“For us it’s the most straightforward, the fairest way of going racing and that’s what we’ve asked for.”
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Jack
22nd May 2025, 23:36
100% it’s right. Lando wants team orders to get him ahead despite Oscar leading the championship.
Last race it was obvious McLaren weren’t going to order Oscar to move aside because if they did Oscar would say well if he doesn’t get past Max then swap positions. McLaren still favour Lando but Oscar is outperforming him and makes it difficult.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
23rd May 2025, 4:17
Yes, in f1 team orders just because of liking a driver more don’t exist, if the incumbent driver outperforms the number 1 driver he takes his place as a number 1, for now it makes sense to let them race, then at this rate it may come a point when, if verstappen\red bull are any threat, it will be norris having to let piastri by for the championship.
Jordi Casademunt (@casjo)
23rd May 2025, 9:35
Piastri tried to have team orders at Japan to be let through by Norris so he could have a go at Verstappen.
In both cases it was fair to suggest it and it was fair that the team chose not to order a swap.
Right now both drivers are ahead of Verstappen. Red Bull might have found something at Imola, but it might have been an outlier. It would be really foolish to fully commit on either driver so early in the championship while both are performing similarly (it’s not like Norris has fallen behind Verstappen or Russell, he’s second in the championship just 13 points behind Piastri). That might change at some point during the season, but right now it’s pointless.
Russell
23rd May 2025, 6:00
Seems to me they are completely underestimating Verstappen which I don’t understand at all. McLaren are acting like they’re 2014 Mercedes, it’s bizarre.
Jere (@jerejj)
23rd May 2025, 6:50
Fair point
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
23rd May 2025, 10:10
If Prost had been in Piastri’s position, he would have immediately let Norris through, knowing that Verstappen would never surrender a victory in the last laps even if it meant risking a crash. In the worst-case scenario, Norris would fail to pass and would have to return the position. Norris likely had only about a 20% chance of passing Verstappen cleanly given Imola’s narrow layout.
Ferdi
23rd May 2025, 13:47
They still have some learning to do at McLaren. They will get there, just like they did with their car. Max meanwhile still benefits.