Although McLaren hasn’t gone as far as to deny Max Verstappen’s championship comment, Andrea Stella says if he has the choice of drivers on the grid, he’s “very happy” with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

The F1 2025 World title could be decided on Sunday night when the drivers line up on the Lusail grid for the penultimate race of the championship, the Qatar Grand Prix.

McLaren: “We are very happy that we have Lando and Oscar…”

Norris heads into the race with a 22-point lead over his teammate Oscar Piastri, with Verstappen 25 off the pace. It means Verstappen has to outscore Norris under the lights at Lusail to keep his championship hopes alive.

But if you ask the Red Bull driver, the title should’ve been decided a long time ago.

Although Red Bull wrapped up the Constructors’ title in Singapore, the individual trophy could yet rumble on to the very last race of the season.

Verstappen reckons if he were in the McLaren MCL39, it would’ve been game over a long time ago.

“If we would have been in the position of how dominant of a car, well, [McLaren] had, let’s say it like that, [the] championship would have been over a long time ago,” Verstappen claimed to Formula 1.com.

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

???? The results of the F1 2025 championship

???? The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

That was put to Norris after the Sprint in Qatar, with the championship leader making his thoughts clear.

“Max generally has a good clue about a lot of things,” he said, “but, there’s also a lot of things he doesn’t have much of a clue about.

“But this is also Red Bull’s way of going about things is this kind of aggressive nature and, yeah, just talking nonsense a lot of the time.

“So it depends if you want to listen to it and talk about it, like you love to, or, you do what we do as a team, which is just kind of keep our heads down, keep focused.

“So, maybe he would have done [win the title], but he hasn’t so far, and he’s trying.”

Verstappen, however, doubled down on that when speaking with the Dutch media in Qatar.

Asked about Norris saying he’s talking nonsense.

“No, I always put facts on the table,” he told GPBlog.

But while the drivers went back-and-forth, the question of whether Verstappen would’ve already been the F1 2025 World Champion if he was behind the wheel of the MCL39 was put to McLaren team principal Stella ahead of Sunday night’s grand prix.

“We will never know, I guess,” Stella told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets in Qatar.

“We are very happy that we have Lando and Oscar and we are working very hard to make sure that the champion is one of the two.

“Somehow, I think this kind of comments may be exaggerated also in the way it is reported, so we don’t really have to comment very much.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Mat Coch

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