Oscar Piastri sends ‘no blank cheque’ message to Lando Norris amid McLaren team orders debate

Oscar Piastri: No ‘black cheque’ for Lando Norris over McLaren team orders

The Woking-based team remain hopeful of landing the Drivers’ title too, with Norris’s victory at the recent Singapore Grand Prix reducing Max Verstappen’s advantage to 52 points.

McLaren’s stance on team orders came under scrutiny at last month’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where Piastri overtook Norris on the opening lap after both cars locked out the front row of the grid.

Both drivers ultimately missed out on victory as Charles Leclerc stormed to an emotional win for Ferrari, with McLaren missing a major opportunity to take a chunk out of Verstappen’s lead on a day the reigning World Champion could only manage a distant sixth.

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Andrea Stella, the McLaren team principal, responded by declaring ahead of the next race in Baku that the team will “bias” their support towards Norris for the rest of F1 2024 “without too much compromise on our principles” of sportsmanship and being “fair to both drivers.”

The situation was turned on its head in Azerbaijan as Norris helped Piastri to victory, holding up Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez to prevent a Red Bull undercut during the pit-stop phase.

That allowed Piastri to apply pressure on race leader Leclerc, completing a bold move on the Ferrari driver shortly after he emerged from the pits ahead of Perez.

Piastri has reiterated his willingness to support Norris’s title charge, but insists his team-mate will not have “a blank cheque” across the final six races as McLaren aim to seal the Constructors’ crown.

And he pointed to his victory in Baku as a good example of how McLaren can enforce team orders to the overall benefit of the team, admitting that Norris “has a share” in his win.

He told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport: “The team wants to win both championships. If you have the opportunity to do so, you can’t let it pass you by.

“If I’m only thinking about myself, I don’t like team orders against me. No driver likes that. For your own pride, you want to show that you are the fastest driver on the track.

“Nevertheless, I will help Lando in the final races if I am asked. He has the more realistic chance of winning the title.

“But that’s not a blank cheque. It has to make sense for me to let him by.

“We also want to win the constructors’ championship and sacrificing my race to help Lando won’t help us achieve that goal.

“We will decide on a case-by-case basis.

“Baku showed how we do things at McLaren. If Lando hadn’t stopped Perez after the first pit stop, I might not have won. He has a share in my victory.”

Having claimed his maiden F1 victory at July’s Hungarian GP, where Norris threatened to ignore McLaren’s requests to swap places with his team-mate until the closing laps, Piastri doubled his victory tally at Baku with a performance his manager and former Red Bull driver Mark Webber hailed as “pretty world class.”

Piastri revealed that he regards Baku as the greatest moment of his career to date, having pounced when Leclerc left the door open at Turn 1 on Lap 20 before defending for most of the remaining 31 laps.

He explained: “It was the best victory of my career.

“When pulled away in the first stint, I never thought I would win the race. Second place seemed to me to be the best possible result.

“After the pit stop, I saw a half chance to take the lead. I had more grip for a few laps and knew that if I didn’t overtake him now, it would never work.

“The overtaking manoeuvre made up 40 per cent of the victory, defending the lead over 35 laps the remaining 60 per cent.

“The first attempt to overtake Charles on the medium tyres went wrong. I cooked the tyres in the process.

“My race engineer warned me: never do that again. Unfortunately, I had to throw his warning to the wind the second time.

“It was close. I thought I was going to end up in the run-off area, but somehow I managed it.”

Piastri has emerged as an increasingly consistent performer as the F1 2024 season has developed, scoring the most points of any driver over the last nine races and collecting six podium finishes – including two wins – across the last eight rounds, stretching back to the Austrian GP on June 30.

The 23-year-old has played down the significance of those statistics, admitting that he is simply revelling in the fact that he now has a car capable of winning at every circuit, even when it is not necessarily the fastest.

Asked if he regrets losing points to Norris at the start of the season given his current form, he replied: “I don’t believe in such arithmetic games.

“Some other driver has probably scored the most points from the last eight or last ten races. Anyone can get the result that makes them look good.

“What counts is the now. McLaren gives me a car that is very fast everywhere.

“And if it’s not the fastest car, like in Baku, it still gives you the chance to win if the team and you do everything right.”