Former F1 engineer Rob Smedley has pointed to a key difference between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri regarding their futures.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
McLaren has the longest unchanged driver line-up on the current F1 grid, with both Norris and Piastri having long-term deals in place.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The team has enjoyed a highly successful run of seasons, peaking with a double championship success last year, with Norris coming out on top in the drivers’ championship.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Although McLaren failed to carry over its title-contending form to 2026, Norris has continued to outpace Piastri, as was the case in the latter half of his title-winning campaign.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It was suggested by one of the hosts of the High Performance Racing podcast that Piastri could look to leave the team in the near future and seek an opportunity elsewhere.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Weighing in on the subject, Smedley pointed out that there appears to be a much different atmosphere on Norris’ side of the garage.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
When the possibility of Piastri leaving the team was put to him, Smedley replied: \u201cYeah, as long as it was a better team.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cLando says all the time, ‘I want to spend my whole career here’. He’s in a honeymoon period and he loves the team, blah blah blah.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you don’t hear Oscar saying that very much, ‘I’ll spend my whole career here.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
McLaren returned to the top step of the podium last time out in Hungary, as a significant car upgrade aided Norris’ run to first place.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former F1 engineer Rob Smedley has pointed to a key difference between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri regarding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820231,"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-848389","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\/848389","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=848389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}