Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher has dismissed the suggestion that McLaren is favouring Lando Norris in the title fight.<\/p>\n
The battle for the drivers’ championship this year has largely been between Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri, however a strong surge in form from Max Verstappen has seen the Red Bull driver become a late contender.<\/p>\n
Norris has held the upper hand over Piastri over the last five rounds, outscoring the Australian at every grand prix since the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Piastri has been mystified as to the cause of his slump in form – but Schumacher has asserted it has nothing to do with influence from McLaren.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat whole story that McLaren CEO Zak Brown is favouring Lando Norris is total nonsense,\u201d Schumacher told the Backstage Boxengasse podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can tell you one thing, and I know this from a reliable source: Zak doesn’t pull ahead of anyone, just whoever is the fastest at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn’t care who wins the championship, as long as the title ends up with the McLaren team.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just wants to have the world champion on his team, he doesn’t care about his name. Zak is a good guy, but also a hard businessman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having been off the pace compared to Norris in Mexico, Piastri voiced his confusion over where the drop-off has stemmed from.<\/p>\n
Schumacher has warned Piastri he must not be drawn into believing he is being treated unfairly.<\/p>\n
“You get the idea that he feels he is not being treated fairly, that things have changed around him,\u201d Schumacher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is dangerous, I know from my own experience.<\/p>\n
“If you start looking for reasons why things are suddenly not going so well – suggesting, for example, that the car suddenly feels different – then the outside world gets the idea that you are no longer content.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher has dismissed the suggestion that McLaren is favouring Lando Norris in the title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266197,"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-266196","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\/266196","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=266196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}