Oscar Piastri says McLaren may have changed their driver line-up if Lando Norris rivalry got ‘nasty’

Follow us on Google Discover

Oscar Piastri says both McLaren drivers knew their seats weren’t guaranteed if last year’s championship battle turned ‘nasty’. Lando Norris eventually won the title after a season-long battle with his teammate.

Piastri and Norris crashed twice during the season. Norris was at fault in Canada, where he tagged the sister car before finding the barriers, but the team felt Piastri was predominantly to blame for the turn-one tangle in the USA Sprint.

There were also some controversial team orders, most notably at the Italian GP when Piastri had to give up second place after Norris’ slow pit stop. But despite many predicting that a fallout was inevitable, the two drivers outwardly remained on good terms all year.

F1 is back! Who is going to win the Miami Grand Prix?

Comment

Like or Comment

Have your say Sign-in now for free

Oscar Piastri: I may not have been wearing orange if I’d fallen out with Lando Norris

Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Piastri acknowledged that the situation was delicate. If the relationship deteriorated, then McLaren would have considered breaking up their driver line-up.

But crucially, the rivalry didn’t become toxic, unlike Lewis Hamilton vs Nico Rosberg at Mercedes in the mid-2010s.

After coming through last year unscathed, it’s said that Piastri and Norris are collaborating well at the start of 2026 in an effort to close the gap to Mercedes.

Which McLaren driver will leave the team first?

Let us know your reasoning in the comments!

Comment

Like or Comment

Have your say Sign-in now for free

Piastri said: “We both knew the situation we were in of trying to beat each other and only one of us could win. We knew all of that, but it never got nasty, and I think that’s a really important thing.

“It would have been very easy for last year to have got nasty. If it really got bad, it would have been the question of whether one of us was sat here doing this interview wearing orange!

“The team dynamics are so important to protect going forwards. Obviously, we’ve not started this year the way we want, but it would have been so easy for the battle of last year to make it look 10 times worse for a long time.”

Zak Brown has shown an interest in Max Verstappen and reportedly enquired about his availability at the start of 2025, but the Dutchman’s contract ended up being watertight.

Oscar Piastri ‘can’t hide’ anything from Lando Norris

Piastri was also asked about the open-book culture at McLaren, which he says many teams share. Zak Brown and Andrea Stella encourage maximum collaboration in the collective interest.

Inevitably, this can cause frustration if a driver discovers ‘something special’, but it’s designed to be a mutually beneficial philosophy.

Norris and Piastri continued to share their data during last year’s championship fight, but this hasn’t always been the way in F1.

“It’s the way of modern teams anyway, especially at McLaren,” said Piastri. “That’s the way it’s going to be, whether I want it to be or not. It’s a very good way of going about things.

“Of course, if you find something special that you think no-one else has found, you’re going to want to try and keep that to yourself, but we’ve got hundreds of people working in our team, other teams have got the same. You can’t hide.

“It goes the opposite way as well. If you’re in that position when someone else has done something and you want to work out how to do that, you want as many tools at your disposal as you can get.

“I think everyone probably has their little moments of ‘okay, I want to keep that one to myself’, but if you start going down that route, eventually it’ll bite you when you probably least want it.”