Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has called on McLaren to back Oscar Piastri in the F1 drivers’ title fight.<\/p>\n
Piastri currently holds a 22-point lead over Lando Norris with six rounds remaining.<\/p>\n
While the McLaren duo have largely been seen as the main contenders in the fight, Max Verstappen is posing an outside threat, 66 points adrift of Piastri.<\/p>\n
McLaren no longer appears to have the advantage over the rest of the field it possessed earlier in the campaign, as it is now winless at the last three events.<\/p>\n
Last time out in Singapore, Piastri and Norris clinched the constructors’ championship for McLaren – \u00a0but only after the pair collided on the opening lap.<\/p>\n
“I would say first of all, a fantastic job,” Steiner told the Red Flags podcast, reflecting on McLaren’s title win.<\/p>\n
“But what they put on in Singapore was not a world championship show.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe car performance was good, but with the drivers at some stage, either you have rules or you don’t have rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cPapaya rules, which nobody knows what they are, if they even exist, but you change them around and one day it\u2019s like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen has out-scored both McLaren drivers at the last three races, sealing victories in Italy and Azerbaijan respectively.<\/p>\n
As the Dutchman seeks to make an almighty run at sealing his fifth title, Steiner has stated the time has come for McLaren to favour one driver.<\/p>\n
“Either you let them race or if you’re getting worried to lose the world championship, you have to make the call,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to tell one guy, and obviously that one guy is Oscar in the moment because he has got more points than Lando.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, and it’s nothing against Lando. Oscar put himself in the first two-thirds of the races in a better position.<\/p>\n
“Now it’s \u2018you go and win the world championship\u2019 because if they lose the drivers’ world championship now, I wouldn’t be happy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then you have got two unhappy drivers, at least if you favour one, you’ve got only one unhappy driver.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has called on McLaren to back Oscar Piastri in the F1 drivers’ title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-208183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}