Piastri declines to support Norris’s title bid, focusing on his own F1 races.
Oscar Piastri believes it is premature to be asked to let Lando Norris pass him during races, even as Norris seeks to close the gap with championship leader Max Verstappen.
McLaren’s resurgence has allowed Norris to close within 70 points of Verstappen, who earlier in the season seemed on track to clinch his fourth world championship.
Questions were first raised about McLaren’s strategy during the Austrian sprint race, where Piastri, capitalising on Norris’s duel with Verstappen, managed to overtake his teammate and secure second place. Piastri finished the race in second, with Norris right behind him.
In Hungary, Piastri once again got the better of Norris, and after the team’s decision to pit Norris first, they later instructed him to move aside to allow Piastri to take the lead and ultimately claim his first race victory.
However, with nine races remaining and Piastri trailing Verstappen by 116 points, he feels it is too soon for the team to consider sacrificing his results just yet.
“I will always try to win next weekend’s race!” he declared.
“That’s my stance. We are still behind in the constructors’ championship, and we want to make sure we win it. My best contribution is to try to win the race.”
“Supporting Lando… I think the gap between Lando and Max is still quite large, and it’s even larger for me with Max, but it’s not impossible. We’ll take it on a case-by-case basis, of course, each weekend.”
“If the gap significantly narrows and I’m not really in contention, I know I might be called upon to assist. But I think with the gap as it is currently, it’s still very, very early for that. And ultimately, I also want to win races. But I know if asked, I will be happy to help.”
The fact that both titles are under consideration demonstrates just how much McLaren has advanced in a relatively short span of time, and when asked what the most crucial factor in this progression was, Piastri has one name in mind.
“I believe if I had to pick one, it would be Andrea’s leadership and everything that it entails.”
“Maximizing the potential of the people we have. We’ve brought on new personnel, but I think the key has been getting the most out of the people we already had.”
“It’s evident that they had a lot of potential which Andrea, along with the rest of the team, was able to harness. Collectively, I think that’s what has been most significant.”
“We started the year with a competitive car. It’s just that the field was so tight that being a few tenths of a second off, as we see now, makes the difference between winning the race and finishing seventh or eighth, which is where we are in some races.”
“And I think with the measures we put in place in Miami, we somehow found those few tenths and it has propelled us right to the top of the list, so we haven’t suddenly found a magic button or anything like that. It’s simply a matter of hard work, improving the car, enhancing the people, and execution.”
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McLaren’s Piastri Resists Early Team Orders in F1 McLaren’s Piastri Resists Early Team Orders in F1
