Oscar Piastri’s view on giving up F1 wins to help Lando Norris beat Max Verstappen | F1 | Sport
Oscar Piastri is willing to hand over race wins to team-mate Lando Norris in a bid to help his colleague win a maiden Drivers’ Championship title. The Australian has outperformed his McLaren rival in recent races, taking critical points away from the Brit.
Piastri found himself on the positive end of team orders in Hungary earlier this year when Norris moved aside to reinstate the Aussie into the lead of the race.
On that day, the 24-year-old was reminded by race engineer Will Joseph that he will “need” his team-mate if he is to beat Max Verstappen to the title.
Now, after claiming his maiden Grand Prix victory at the Hungaroring, Piastri is willing to return the favour and play the team game as Norris looks to trim down the 62-point deficit to Verstappen at the top of the Drivers’ Championship standings.
With the Azerbaijan Grand Prix coming up, McLaren are willing to implement team orders on a regular basis. Speaking to BBC Sport about his conversations with Piastri, team principal Andrea Stella said: “The conversations have been very collaborative.
“Even when I said to Oscar: ‘Would you be available to give up a victory?’ He said: ‘It’s painful, but if it’s the right thing to do now, I will do it’. Every driver is hard-wired to go for a victory.
“So I am always very impressed by the level of team spirit and maturity and collaboration that we found in this period.”
While Stella is willing to make the difficult decision to move Piastri aside, he is keen not to go overboard with the team orders. “Lando wants to win because he deserved the victory on track,” he continued.
“It’s OK to be occasionally supported by your team-mate, but you don’t want to use, systematically, ways of adjusting the race just for the sake of the points when your team-mate is scoring in a way that he deserves.
“This is not the way McLaren want to win, or the way Lando wants to win.
“If I ask Lando, he would say: ‘I am comfortable if in Abu Dhabi I miss a few points that I could have got with some actions, but if those actions were not right at the time, then, you know what? We keep strong as a team, the team is stable and cohesive, we will give it a go next year’.”
For Norris, the two upcoming races in Baku and Singapore are critical for his title chances. Red Bull have struggled lately on bumpy street circuits and the reigning champions are not anticipating a quick fix for those issues ahead of these two races.
