F1: Should McLaren prioritize Norris over Piastri? Title analysis

Should McLaren Prioritize Norris over Piastri in the Championship Fight?

The recent disqualification of McLaren in Las Vegas, added to the growing threat of Max Verstappen, has reignited the debate over whether the team should favor one of its drivers in the fight for the title. The current situation raises a crucial question: is it time to back Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri to secure the drivers’ championship in 2025? Norris arrives at the Qatar Grand Prix, a sprint weekend with 33 points at stake, with a 24-point lead over Verstappen and his teammate Piastri. Norris could secure the title if he finishes in third place in the three remaining races: the Qatar sprint, Sunday’s main race, and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on December 7th. However, the presence of Verstappen, four-time defending champion, complicates the situation. The idea that it will be an easy task is unrealistic. The events of Sunday in Nevada have raised an obvious question: Is this the moment to favor Norris over Piastri to ensure that a McLaren driver wins the 2025 championship? Critics of the team might question whether they shouldn’t have done it from the start.

Fair Play

The three-way fight is largely due to Verstappen’s impressive form. McLaren has remained true to its philosophy of allowing its drivers to compete fairly. The team has won 13 races compared to Red Bull’s six, with seven victories for Norris and six for Piastri, while all of Red Bull’s victories have been by Verstappen. Despite this, McLaren CEO Zak Brown prefers an approach where both drivers have the opportunity to compete. Brown prefers the scenario where, “we did the best we could and our drivers tied in points and the other beat us by one” instead of imposing team orders.

I would prefer the drivers to tie on points and for someone else to beat us by one point, rather than telling one of our drivers that he can’t win the championship.

Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren

The memory of McLaren’s 2007 season is recurrent in Brown’s explanations. That year, the battle between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton allowed Kimi Räikkönen to win the title. Brown insists that he wouldn’t mind if 2025 followed a similar path.

The 2007 example is interesting since the lack of harmony between the drivers was due to the fact that team orders were not implemented, while harmony exists this year for the same reason. Alonso’s frustration with McLaren in 2007 was, to some extent, validated by how that championship ended. His main complaint was that the team should have backed Alonso over Hamilton.

There’s a stronger argument for the 2007 McLaren to implement team orders than in 2025, for the same point Brown mentioned: it has two drivers fighting for their first championship this year, instead of a reigning champion and a promising rookie. Asking one to back the other would have established the hierarchy between them.

Brown’s philosophy is shared by the team principal, Andrea Stella. Stella worked at Ferrari during the Michael Schumacher era, where he saw how team orders could create a toxic internal environment.

Could McLaren have avoided this scenario?

McLaren could have avoided it, but hindsight is easy. The team couldn’t foresee Red Bull’s improvement at the Italian Grand Prix or the technical infringement in Las Vegas. Implementing team orders can be as complicated as the balance McLaren has maintained for over a year. Backing one driver over another could have resulted in unexpected consequences. Giving priority to a driver at the beginning of the season could have meant favoring Piastri over Norris, given the amount of time he led the championship. Imagine the headlines if McLaren had prioritized a driver and then saw the chosen one’s performance falter. Sometimes, giving yourself two different chances to win can be the best option. Brown’s philosophy is justified. Piastri’s manager, Mark Webber, was part of a legendary title battle in 2010. Webber arrived at the Abu Dhabi climax annoyed because Red Bull had not implemented team orders to allow him to beat his teammate Sebastian Vettel in Brazil in the previous race. Doing so would have put Webber one point behind Alonso upon arriving in Abu Dhabi, but would have eliminated Vettel from contention. Red Bull made the right decision. Alonso was affected when Ferrari’s pit wall panicked and followed Webber’s Red Bull into an early pit stop, sacrificing track position in the process. Vettel won the race and the title, a result that would not have been enough if Webber had yielded in the previous race. By not putting all their eggs in one basket, Red Bull gave themselves a double chance to win the title, which they achieved.

Will McLaren implement team orders now?

We can’t know for sure until the drivers speak to the media on Thursday, but it’s easy to guess. Asking Piastri to back Norris’ championship now is surely incomprehensible, given the way the season has gone to this point. Even if it’s hard to imagine, it surely has to be considered, especially if the race unfolds in a strange way on Sunday.

Brown and Stella have never shown any sign that they would deviate from their stated philosophy, and doing so now would seem like panic in the face of Verstappen’s current position in the championship. Several scenarios must be resonating in their minds. What if Norris and Piastri collide again? What if Norris’s car suffers another breakdown in Abu Dhabi? Letting Verstappen continue in the contest is the last thing the team can do, given how often F1 title fights tend to unfold dramatically and unpredictably. Performance also needs to be considered. While Qatar is expected to be a circuit that suits McLaren, the team may also be forced to sacrifice some performance with a conservative setup that avoids any possibility of repeating the plank issue that cost them so much in Nevada. That essentially came from running the ride height too close to the ground in an attempt to optimize the car. In a sprint weekend, with two opportunities to score points, the risk of non-compliance with the regulations is even greater.

Can the team really risk Verstappen being closer than he is now in Abu Dhabi? Let’s not forget that, with 33 points at stake in two days in Qatar, there is a scenario in which Verstappen could reach the final of the championship leading the title, it is unlikely, but in a year as unpredictable as this, the only predictable thing has been the regularity of Verstappen’s brilliance.

Brown is sincere in the way he wants to win a championship, but it would be human to start doubting that point of view when the reality of not winning the drivers’ title is now so tempting. He will know that there is no world championship trophy for trying to win things the right way. There is no Wikipedia page listing all the drivers and teams that could claim a moral victory in the fight for the title. The historical precedent must also be considered. Would Brown and Stella let another year go by without winning a championship or another? Since it began in 1958, there have only been 11 occasions in which a team has won the constructors’ championship and not the drivers’; McLaren was the most recent entry to that list last year. Perhaps more surprisingly for McLaren, considering what’s at stake, there has only been one occasion in which a team has repeated as constructors’ champion without winning the drivers’ championship in either year: Ferrari claimed that award in 1982 and 1983. The Scuderia, at least, could attribute part of that to the team’s tragic 1982 season, when Gilles Villeneuve died in an accident at Zolder before Didier Pironi suffered a career-ending accident at Hockenheim while leading the championship. McLaren wouldn’t have such a legitimate excuse if it repeated that Ferrari story. Everything indicates that McLaren is willing to die on the hill that Brown and Stella have built this season. Fair or not, if that means Verstappen wins the 2025 drivers’ championship, in the eyes of most observers, McLaren would only have themselves to blame.