Andrea Stella must U-turn key decision in 2025 title fight as McLaren risk ‘dangerous territory’

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McLaren are at a critical point in the 2025 Formula 1 season. The way they have handled the title fight between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri has come under fire in recent weeks.

Heading into the Singapore Grand Prix, the latter leads the championship by 25 points. His advantage was cut down in Baku, after Piastri crashed out on lap one and in qualifying, while Norris finished a disappointing seventh.

McLaren’s disaster in Baku came after Norris was controversially favoured over Piastri in Monza. The Brit was running second until a slow stop saw his teammate undercut him, only for the pit wall to instruct the Aussie to let him back through.

This caused outrage among fans, pundits and several figures in the paddock, who now believe that the Woking outfit are swaying a certain way in the title picture. Many believe that Norris is being favoured for the title over Piastri.

McLaren have constantly reiterated that their drivers are free to fight, but that stretches to all aspects of their individual garages. This was made apparent in Budapest, when Piastri ran a two-stop strategy and was leading the race until Norris executed a one-stop and claimed victory.

This decision was circumstantial, given that Norris had a poor start to the race. But with the way Andrea Stella is keen for McLaren to operate when it comes to strategy, he risks causing division among the drivers.

Dan Fallows says teams risk breaking ‘trust’ and entering ‘dangerous territory’ if race engineers keep secrets about strategy

Stella ‘outright’ ruled out banning alternate strategies for Norris and Piastri. He will give them and their respective engineers the choice of how they race.

But as former Red Bull and Aston Martin engineer Dan Fallows notes in his column for RaceTeq, this can put the team in ‘dangerous territory’. He says that race engineers are as competitive as drivers, and holding back information from the other side of the garage risks breaking trust.

“With limited testing, teams make the most of Friday practice sessions to try new set-up directions such as balancing aerodynamic characteristics with roll stiffness to tune how the car uses its tyres,” Fallows writes.

“If one side of the garage hits a sweet spot or makes an obvious gain, that will usually come to light in the debrief meeting and the other car can adopt it if they think it will also help them.

“I have heard of teams where this doesn’t always happen, however. Race engineers are every bit as competitive as the rest of the team and giving their car a material advantage over the other one can be useful in proving their superiority.

“This is really dangerous territory for the rest of the engineering team; however, if secrets are being kept at the track, no one ultimately benefits.

“Drivers can easily be involved in this as well, sometimes deliberately downplaying the effect of some key change in order to avoid, or at least delay, their team-mate getting wind of it.

“In the extreme, this kind of gamesmanship can become quite overt and start to eat away at the trust inside a team.”

READ MORE: All you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine

Andrea Stella must U-turn on allowing Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to pick alternate strategies to avoid friction

Quite simply, this is something Stella and McLaren need to U-turn on. With there being enough backlash towards the team’s operation as it is, the last thing they need is for Norris and Piastri to grow distant towards one another.

Frustrations are already being made apparent between the drivers. Juan Pablo Montoya noticed Piastri ‘lost his temper’ after his retirement in Baku; the pressure of holding off Norris in the title fight is getting to him, and the Brit being favoured in Budapest and Monza will not help matters.

Furthermore, Max Verstappen could be back in the title hunt after winning in Monza and Baku. Helmut Marko says Verstappen is making McLaren nervous, and the Woking outfit could open the door for the Dutchman if friction boils within the team.

Piastri will not be prioritised over Norris as his gap in the championship is not big enough. But McLaren must ensure that things are done as fairly as possible between the drivers and give them both the best shot at becoming champion, as they claim to be doing.