F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\nMcLaren\u2019s papaya rules, summed up as race hard but cleanly and without contact, have set the tone for the championship fight with the McLaren bosses adamant they won\u2019t get involved unless necessary.<\/p>\n
But even in an intra-team fight, there will come a moment when the team will have to tell either Piastri or Norris to cool their heels.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually,\u201d accepted McLaren CEO Zak Brown, \u201cwe\u2019ll just sit down and actually have a conversation and go, \u2018right, one of you is going to win and it\u2019s going to be the best day of your life. One of you is going to lose. <\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018How do you want us to handle that?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll actually sit down and go, \u2018Right, you want us to jump up and down and celebrate? This guy won\u2019. So we\u2019re fully aware and sensitive to how do you celebrate that situation\/\u201d<\/p>\n
But before the Woking team gets to that moment, there will be \u201cswapping paint\u201d, as Brown put it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s competitiveness brewing,\u201d declared the American, \u201cas the championship builds, I\u2019m sure that tension will grow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fully anticipating them swapping paint again at some point. I\u2019m very confident it won\u2019t be deliberate, which is where you then get into the problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will have racing incidents in their further time here at McLaren, we know that and they know that, so we\u2019re not afraid of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m positive they\u2019re never going to run each other off the track, and that\u2019s where you get into bad blood. So they\u2019re free to race\u2026 there are rules around our racing, which is respect your team-mate, they know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But whether it is team ethos, a flash of anger or one of desperation, a hail Mary or a last-lap-of-the-season-winner-takes-all moment, former F1 driver Brundle is convinced the McLaren harmony won\u2019t last much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s two against one at the front,\u201d Brundle told Sky Sports. \u201cSo strategy wise, McLaren has got very much the upper hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019ll be thinking they\u2019re World Championship. They know they can\u2019t run into each other. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey know it\u2019s very clear in the team \u2013 if you hurt the team, we\u2019ll hurt you, there\u2019ll be payback. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo the drivers know the ground rules. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, you know, we\u2019re into the second half of the season, I think that would be pushing very, very hard to for their own points.\u201d<\/p>\n
On an even keel at the final race before the summer break, McLaren used Norris\u2019 one-stop strategy against Piastri\u2019s one-stopper. The Aussie was on a two-stop to cover off pole-sitter Charles Leclerc, but it ultimately opened the door for the one-stopping Norris to beat them both.<\/p>\n
With both drivers given a say in their strategy mid-race, it was McLaren\u2019s clearest indication yet that it won\u2019t get involved in the Drivers\u2019 fight.<\/p>\n
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella is adamant the drivers will decide who wins this year\u2019s World title.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there may be a natural increase of what could be a sense of pressure because the races reduce in number and every race will become, relatively, slightly more important,\u201d McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told the media, including PlanetF1.com, in Budapest.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut from the point of view of the team principal and the team, our two drivers and the team have sustained this quest to the championships in a very solid way.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver time, reviewing this race by race, we have created a solid racing approach, an approach to which Lando and Oscar have definitely contributed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like the team created this racing approach and now Lando and Oscar follow it \u2013 we have put it together as a team including drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I think this is a very robust framework, and this will be more and more important as the marginal value of every race increases as we get closer to the end of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read next: Wanted: New Red Bull strategy chief ahead of latest key departure<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following Zak Brown\u2019s warning that the conversations \u201cwill\u201d come, Martin Brundle has told Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,1613,590,44,82],"class_list":["post-76561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-mclaren","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}