McLaren is the new talk of the F1 town thanks to its phenomenal rise in performance. With upgrades that have increased the capacity of the MCL38 by leaps and bounds, the papaya army has completely turned around its scores. Now, both its racers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, regularly vie for race wins and this sometimes even leads to conflicts between them. At the Hungarian GP, the Woking outfit almost had to strongarm Lando into conceding the lead to Oscar. And a similar situation could have arisen at the recently-held Dutch GP.

As soon as the F1 circus returned for racing at Max Verstappen‘s home circuit, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri brought a 1-2 finish at the Qualifying. Thus, the fans at the Zandvoort circuit geared up for yet another repeat of the Hungarian GP where the two McLaren racers would lock horns for P1 in the grid. However, the same scenario did not take place as Lando won the Dutch GP with a comfortable margin of about 22.9s. However, the discussions on Lando and Oscar’s positions in their Milton-Keynes-based team have still not subsided.

Recently, McLaren CEO Zak Brown clarified the doubts about his team’s priorities when it comes to its two recruits. The American motorsports veteran said, “I mean, make no mistake about it. They [Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri] both want to be number one and they are both number one. We just don’t have any number of twos. But they race for the team.” For many, Brown’s ambiguous statement meant McLaren did not have clear team orders to resolve tough situations between Oscar and Lando.

However, McLaren’s Team Principal Andrea Stella has now refuted Zak Brown’s words to say that their team does know who stands where. The Italian said to FormulaPassion, “We have always discussed team orders since the first race because you always want to go into a race with a clear idea of how to manage the internal competition between the two drivers.” So, this means that, given Lando Norris’ dominance in the current Championship, McLaren might need to make the tough decision of keeping Oscar Piastri as its second racer–but how?

Andrea Stella assures that McLaren’s decision will always involve Oscar Piastri

Piastri entered McLaren as Daniel Ricciardo’s replacement only 2 years ago (at the start of 2023). In his second season, he has already become a formidable teammate-cum-rival for Lando Norris. Meanwhile, Lando has stayed with the Papaya army ever since his F1 debut in 2019, and he is currently second in the World Championship too. At a time like this, the Woking team must pool its resources behind Lando to catapult him to the top of the Drivers’ Championship table.

But giving preference to Lando Norris might mean that McLaren would be neglecting its duty to help Oscar Piastri. So, Andrea Stella explains how he wants his squad to avoid that, saying, “For every race, we analyze the situations and in the 50-50 situations or in the cases where, in this case, Lando might need a little bit more support from the team, we will give it. But the team also includes Oscar and we will not do things that are not reasonable for Oscar.”

So, Stella believes the path towards glory for McLaren will have equal importance for both Lando and Oscar even though his team will give the necessary preference to the Belgian-British racer to defeat Max Verstappen in the current World Championship fight. The Italian has also vowed not to make decisions on behalf of McLaren that would benefit Lando Norris at the cost of Oscar Piastri’s race results.

Thus, the Lando Norris versus Oscar Piastri debate might be the new Lewis/Nico story in F1; but who do you think will come out on top at the end of this battle? Let us know in the comments below.