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McLaren is passing its own test

With two laps to go in the Hungarian Grand Prix, Oscar Piastri jinked his car toward the inside of Turn 1 and Lando Norris just took the corner as if nothing was different to any other lap.

Piastri was behind and trying to take victory, having closed in on his one-stopping teammate. The lock-up that followed saw the pair come perilously close to contact, but there was no touch, and aside from a warning from Piastri’s race engineer Tom Stallard, it was play on.

“Remember how we go racing,” Stallard said.

That was a reference to McLaren trying to ensure the drivers limit the level of risk with which they attempt moves on each other, with team principal Andrea Stella actually praising the way the two drivers handled the situation.

“When you have two great drivers, like Lando and Oscar, who race for a victory in a Formula 1 grand prix and race for the drivers’ championship, it’s always going to be very close,” Stella said.

“That was firm racing; it was fair racing at the same time. It was definitely within our principles. We had a bit of a lock-up with Oscar, but at the same time, Lando left some space because he knew that Oscar would have been at the limit of braking.

“We keep being very proud of how Lando and Oscar go racing. I think this is a great way of honoring Formula 1 racing. These are the values of McLaren.

“It’s going to be, hopefully, a matter between the two McLaren drivers – even if we saw Ferrari was in the competition for the victory for two-thirds of the race [today] – and I think we have a very entertaining and interesting final part of the season.”

McLaren allowing a race to develop in the way it did was entertaining, with Norris gambling on a one-stop strategy having been stuck in fourth place throughout the first stint of the race. Piastri, meanwhile, was two-stopping and it appeared his side of the garage focused on Charles Leclerc at at that stage.

“I think we had to try and do something to beat Leclerc because it wasn’t obvious that we just had enough pace to blow past him and go and win that way,” Piastri said of his strategy. “We tried something. Was it the right thing in the end? I don’t know, but it’s always much easier when you’re the car behind to take that risk.

“For Lando, there was virtually nothing to lose by trying a one-stop race. For myself, potentially there was. We’ll look back and see if there was anything we should have done differently, but a two-stop was always the plan before the race, so it wasn’t even really discussed that much about doing a one-stop. It was certainly a gamble.

“In the race, I got asked about it. Very difficult to know from the cockpit what is going, to be the best thing to do. Like I said, when you’re the car behind, your risk-reward ratio is always much different, so there’s always that.

“Could we have matched Lando? That’s, I guess, the question that I don’t have the answer to. I guess that’s the only thing. We wanted to try and win the race as well, and the best way of trying to beat Lando is by trying to win the race as well. That was obviously an intention, but I think we’ll definitely analyze if there was something we could have done a bit differently.”

It was worth a try, and he still kept it clean. That’s what matters. Joe Portlock/Getty Images

From Norris’ point of view, the strategy cards fell his way, but the execution still needed to be right. It wasn’t luck that gave him the win, even if there was some fortune to the fact he dropped to fifth in line and was backed into a corner where he had to try something different to gain track position against George Russell at the very least.

“I think it’s one of the first ones I’ve won in this manner,” Norris said afterwards. “I’ve not won many races, so most circumstances are still new, but I think it’s the first one where doing a completely alternate strategy to most, giving myself that opportunity, worked out.

“There have been some others where going long in the first stint – Miami – then getting the safety car, things like that have helped me from a luck side. Today, there was not really any of that, so I think [it’s] the most rewarding [from a ‘let’s try to do something different’ point of view] and it working out , which was a good one.

“It’s a tough strategy to do, but it worked out. That’s the most important thing. Honestly, I didn’t really think it was going to work for the majority of that second stint, but with every lap I kind of gained more confidence that it was going to be closer and closer.”

Close it was. Piastri’s demeanor after the race suggested he didn’t feel hard done by from a team’s decision point of view, nor did he have any qualms about the messages about the way the two should race each other in the closing stages.

To that end, McLaren’s walking the walk and it’s paying off so far. It has maintained it will allow its drivers to race, and it knows that will lead to controversial moments at certain times.

A well-timed comment from CEO Zak Brown pre-race suggested the two drivers are less likely to be frustrated with how each other’s races pan out because of the openness with which they are treated, and similarly that collaboration creates the environment to allow them to sort it between themselves on the circuit.

Perhaps the best pairing of teammates in recent memory? Zak Brown thinks so. Sam Bloxham/Getty Images

“I don’t think they’ll properly fall out … because of the communication, trust and respect we all have, and they have for each other,” Brown said. “I think we’re very fortunate to have the two personalities that we have.

“We love the challenge. I’m looking forward to them racing each other, which we saw in Austria and Silverstone. We like it. It’s not the elephant in the room; we talk about it. We meet every Sunday morning after we’ve seen how qualifying is going. They know each other’s strategy. We’re totally transparent.

“I’ve said to both of them individually, in windows of opportunity, ‘Has your teammate ever done anything to p*** you off?’ ‘Never.’ That’s what they both said.

“There’s competitiveness brewing, but we’re not feeling any tension. As the championship builds, I’m sure that tension will grow, but like [the collision in] Montreal, I’m glad we got it out of the way, because it was a non-event. Lando owned it. Oscar understood. It was a mistake.

“We’re fully anticipating them swapping paint again at some point. I’m very confident it won’t be deliberate, which is where you then get into the problems. There’s one guy going to lock a brake, wet track… They will have racing incidents in their further time here at McLaren. We know that. They know that. We’re not afraid of that.

“I’m positive they’re never going to run each other off the track, and that’s where you get into bad blood. They’re free to race. They’ve been free to race. There’s rules around our racing, which is respect your teammate. They know that.

“Sitting in the team debriefs, listening to them… You know, we laugh about some of the stuff back when I was racing – which was not quite at this level – the s*** we did to each other as teammates… We’ve not seen any of that.

“We’re excited to see them race, and if something bubbles up, we’ll deal with it … It seems like from the outside looking in, when you’ve seen battles between other teammates, you’ve kind of seen it brewing and you kind of go, ‘Have they jumped on that, or are they just kind of letting it go?’ We won’t. We’ll take the air out of the balloon right away if we feel like anything’s bubbling up, but we’ve not seen any of it.”

Hungary was another example where tension didn’t seem to build despite the lead car on track ending up second to his teammate. It seems like an impossible task to keep both drivers happy in such a battle for much longer, but up to now McLaren has been sticking to its approach and making it work.