F1: Piastri and Norris, free for the title in Abu Dhabi, Verstappen lurking

Piastri and Norris, freedom to fight for the title in Abu Dhabi

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella has confirmed that Oscar Piastri will be free to compete against teammate Lando Norris for the championship in the final race in Abu Dhabi, despite the threat from Max Verstappen. Piastri dropped to third place in the standings behind Red Bull’s Verstappen at the Qatar Grand Prix, after McLaren made a mistake in their race strategy, throwing away the Australian’s chance of winning the race. Norris, who leads the championship, now has a 12-point lead over Verstappen and a 16-point lead over Piastri, with a maximum of 25 points at stake in Abu Dhabi. McLaren has tried to offer the same opportunities to its drivers throughout the 2025 season and Stella stated that Verstappen’s presence in the fight for the title would not change that approach.

When it comes to having two drivers in the hunt for the World Championship, our philosophy and our approach will not change. We will let Oscar and Lando compete and pursue their aspiration.

Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal

Stella also mentioned that the last two times there were more than two drivers in the fight for the title in the last race (2007 and 2010), the driver in third place before the final race became champion (Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 and Sebastian Vettel in 2010).

Stella added: “Oscar, from a points perspective, he is definitely in a position to win the title. We have seen it before in Formula One history, that when you have this type of situation, sometimes it’s the third one who actually wins. We will let the drivers be in a position to compete with each other. The important thing for us is that we are in a position to beat Verstappen with one of our two drivers.” Stella indicated that he and the drivers will discuss scenarios in which it might make sense for one driver to help the other during the race. One of those eventualities would be if Verstappen is winning towards the end of the race, while Piastri is in third place and Norris in fourth. In that case, Verstappen would overtake both McLaren drivers if the positions remained the same, but Norris would be crowned champion if Piastri gave him third place. Although Stella did not comment on specific scenarios, she said that all parties would have to agree beforehand before an order is executed in the race. “I think any decision we make in terms of using the collaboration of our drivers, we will have to follow some of our fundamental principles, which are fundamental to our approach,” Stella said. “We want to be fair to our drivers, we want to compete with integrity and we want to compete in a way that does not surprise our drivers.” “So, between now and Abu Dhabi, there will be another conversation with Lando and Oscar. We will confirm our race approach, but certainly what I can say is that if any of the drivers are in a position to pursue the quest to win the title, then we will respect this.” “There will be no call that excludes the other driver when the other driver is in a position to win. So we’ll see what scenarios develop, but what I can definitely say is that there will be conversations and there will be a way of racing that is united between the team and the drivers as we always have done.”