Favouritism, conspiracies and even a burger curse, Claire Williams is adamant none of those have played a role in the swing of momentum from Oscar Piastri to Lando Norris in the title race.

After all, says the former Williams team boss, McLaren will always try to do the best for its drivers on any given Sunday.

Lando Norris v Oscar Piastri: Claire Williams’ verdict

⦁ Cries of conspiracies favouring Norris over Piastri
⦁ Williams adamant McLaren ‘always’ support both drivers
⦁ Gloves are off in the title ‘to some degree’

McLaren, with its papaya regulations, has found itself at the heart of several conspiracy theories this season as Norris and Piastri battle for a maiden World Championship.

Although momentum was with Piastri mid-season as he raced to a seventh grand prix win at the Dutch Grand Prix to take a 34-point lead over his teammate, it has since swung in favour of Norris, who leads by 24 points with three race weekends remaining.

The momentum shift began at the Italian Grand Prix, where McLaren issued controversial team orders in favour of Norris. The British driver had been ahead of Piastri on the track, but lost second place to him through a slow pit stop. McLaren’s pit wall then ordered the Australian racer to give the position back.

As cries of favouritism rang out, McLaren’s efforts to downplay it weren’t helped in Singapore when Norris made contact with Piastri on the opening lap as they battled for position. McLaren did not readdress the situation, telling Piastri that it would be dealt with after the race.

Although the team did slap Norris with repercussions, that was reset one race later when Piastri was involved in a multi-car crash at the start of the Sprint in Austin when he tried to cutback underneath his teammate, collided with Nico Hulkenberg, and skittled into Norris and put both McLarens out of the race.

McLaren cleaned the slate, team principal Andrea Stella saying: “We thought that the best approach moving forward was to start with a clean slate and focus in the only direction on which we want to focus, which is, make sure that the Drivers’ Championship is papaya.”

But at a time when Piastri, who has five pole positions to his name this season, was falling short of Norris in qualifying and the races, conspiracy theorists on social media questioned McLaren’s role and whether the Woking team was favouring Norris.

Lando Norris v Oscar Piastri: McLaren head-to-head stats

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Former Formula 1 deputy team principal Williams exonerated her former rivals, saying that while McLaren is dealing with a difficult task in balancing the drivers’ ambitions, the team will “always” do the best for both Norris and Piastri.

“It’s not an easy piece of work,” she told talkSPORT.

“I think that at McLaren, in Lando and Oscar, they’ve got two quite relaxed drivers. But equally, they’re both competitive. They both have fought to get to where they are in Formula 1 today.

“And both of their dreams for many, many years will have always been to win a Drivers’ Championship and they will take that fight to each other on the racetrack. But trying to manage that isn’t an easy piece of work.

“You’re going to have best-laid plans going into every grand prix. You’re going to have the conversations with your drivers to keep it clean, keep it on the racetrack.

“But, you know, racing is a bit of a crazy business. You don’t know what’s going to happen when the lights go out.

“It’s not easy to manage and we can all look on a Monday and go ‘why did they make that decision, why did they do that?’

“But all I can say is McLaren on the pit wall will always have the best intentions and try to do the best thing for their drivers on a Sunday afternoon.”

McLaren has already wrapped up the teams’ trophy, doing so at the Singapore Grand Prix, with six races to spare.

Williams reckons that, to some degree, means the drivers now have more freedom on the track to race one another.

🥇🥈 🥉 And then there were three.

Only Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen are now in contention for the Drivers’ Championship this year. pic.twitter.com/vppScBc43o

— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) November 12, 2025

“I think there probably is to some degree,” she said. “I think it very much depends on what team you are as well, because all teams have different strategies depending invariably on what your business models are.

“But yeah, I think there probably will always be that you can go off and race a bit more now, go and have a bit more fun because we’ve won the Constructors’ and for most teams, that’s the priority, and then they can allow their drivers to perhaps race a bit harder.

“That’s what we’re going to see, and that’s what we have been seeing, this brilliant race between Lando and Oscar, who are doing such a good job flying the flag for Formula 1 and trying to keep it as clean as possible.”

It’s pressure, not a McLaren conspiracy

From Norris being British to Norris having been at McLaren longer than Piastri, McLaren has been accused of favouring the British racer.

Except it isn’t.

Yes, Piastri is on the bad run of form and Norris has hit a purple patch, yes, the championship swing is over 50 points in six races despite the two being in the same car, and yes, Piastri has gone from outqualifying Norris to finishing several tenths off his benchmark.

But that doesn’t mean McLaren is conspiring against Piastri or sabotaging his title bid (nor is the burger chain for that matter).

In only his third season in Formula 1, Piastri is going through a bad patch. It happens; it happens to everyone, and there’s an even better (or worse) chance of it happening when a driver is in the thick of his first title fight.

Cool, calm-headed, unflappable may have been the words used to describe Piastri in the first half of the season, but in the second part of this season, he’s shown that he is as human as any other driver on the grid. And pressure tells.

Norris also went through it earlier this year, leading the standings and then falling off the pace as he fumbled in qualifying when he tried too hard. But once everyone began talking about a Piastri title, the pressure shifted from Norris to his teammate and the Briton found his purple patch.

Now that it is all about Norris, perhaps Piastri can shrug off his hoodoo and fight back.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s pressure.

Read next: Damon Hill identifies Piastri recovery key after Norris ‘found something’ in F1 title battle