Stella said McLaren had reviewed they way they operated last season as drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri battled for the championship and agreed that allowing them to race each other would continue into 2026.<\/p>\n
The team faced a number of difficult situations as they tried to operate in what they considered a fair manner.<\/p>\n
These included Norris being allowed to run a different strategy at the Hungarian Grand Prix, which ended up with him beating Piastri to the win<\/a> even though the Australian was ahead in the early part of the race.<\/p>\n In Italy, Piastri was ordered to give second place back to Norris<\/a> after the Briton lost it following a team intervention on strategy and a slow pit stop.<\/p>\n And there were incidents in Singapore<\/a> and Austin<\/a> where their cars touched – with varying seriousness – which also required managing.<\/p>\n Throughout, both drivers insisted the team’s approach was the one they favoured as they each wanted the best chance to win the championship. Norris ended up beating Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to the title by two points, with Piastri finishing third.<\/p>\n “We talked last year quite a bit about internal racing at McLaren. From that point of view, we will enter 2026 with continuity – we will keep racing the McLaren way,” said Stella.<\/p>\n “If we have been able to achieve success in 2024 and then in 2025, what has added extra value is the way in which we have achieved in such a collaborative, supportive, cohesive way together with our drivers.<\/p>\n “All this has led us to reaffirm fundamentally that the concepts of fairness, integrity, equal opportunities, sportsmanship – they are all fundamental for the team, for Lando and for Oscar. They are confirmed and consolidated, if anything.”<\/p>\n But Stella acknowledged there were ways in which the team could “streamline” operations.<\/p>\n “At the same time, we all acknowledge that the volume of work required, for instance, for the team and to some extent even for the drivers related to internal competition was important,” he said.<\/p>\n “Therefore, any attempt we can make to make this going racing together just simpler to some extent will be welcome. It will be in reality a matter of fine-tuning because once we reviewed what we have done, in most of the cases we said that’s exactly what we would still do again.<\/p>\n “But we have found a few opportunities in which we can streamline the way in which we operate collectively.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stella said McLaren had reviewed they way they operated last season as drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-383879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}