Lando Norris explains why his relationship with Oscar Piastri will always be ‘awkward’

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Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are preparing for their fourth season as teammates at McLaren. Up to this point, Norris has clearly had the upper hand.

The gap, though, has closed year on year. When Piastri was a rookie in 2023, he scored just 32% of McLaren’s points.

In 2024, he improved his contribution to almost 44%, and last year, he reached 49%. Just 13 points separated the two drivers after a season-long title battle that also featured Max Verstappen.

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By all indications, Norris and Piastri remain on good terms, even though they were involved in a series of contentious team decisions last year. Andrea Stella and Zak Brown have sometimes been accused of excessive interference as they try to enforce their philosophy of equal opportunity.

Lando Norris can’t escape ‘awkward dynamic’ with Oscar Piastri

Norris was asked about his relationship with Piastri in an interview with F1’s official website.

Christian Horner says Piastri will be stronger this year, and Norris agrees that his teammate will raise his ‘incredible’ level even further. The Australian won seven races and scored 16 podiums last term.

If both drivers see out their full contracts, they will be partners until at least the end of 2028. Norris says there will be an inescapable awkwardness between them as long as they share the same garage, even if there’s also lasting ‘respect’.

“We’re both looking forward to it again,” Norris said. “Of course he’s going to try harder than ever to turn things around and to do even better than he did last year, which was already incredible, and I have to try and raise my game to deal with that because we both made our lives very tough for each other last year.

Will Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri always be on good terms?

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“We’re going to continue to try and do that for our whole career. It’s just an awkward dynamic always within Formula 1. You don’t get it in any other sport where you’re team mates but you’re also fighting to try and be better than one another.

“But at the end of the day, I think we know that we have respect for one another and that’s the most important thing. We’re going to have moments where things don’t go either our way together or one person’s way but we have a lot of faith in the team.

“Andrea runs things very well and so does Zak. And I think we’re excited for all these battles that we’re going to have together. I’m excited for more of them this year.”

Oscar Piastri says McLaren’s papaya rules ‘will look different’ in 2026

Piastri was also present at McLaren’s media rounds and inevitably faced questions over the so-called ‘papaya rules’.

He was subject to the bulk of McLaren’s team orders last year but has never publicly questioned whether he’s receiving equal treatment. An instruction to let Norris past at Monza, having overtaken him through a defensive undercut, was particularly controversial.

McLaren have made it clear that they will maintain their fundamental principles this year, but Piastri says there will be some common-sense tweaks.

“It will look different,” he said, via ESPN. “We probably caused headaches for ourselves that we didn’t need to at points last year.

“But I think as a general principle and a general way of going racing it does bring a lot of positives with it, and it’s just how do we refine that to try and keep it to just positives basically.”