People in the F1 paddock increasingly think McLaren are ‘favouring’ one driver in 2025 title fight

Follow us on Google Discover

Oscar Piastri leads Lando Norris by 31 points as McLaren’s intra-team title fight continues at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The team are doing all they can to keep the battle fair.

There may have been a decisive swing in Piastri’s favour at the Dutch Grand Prix when Norris retired due to a chassis issue. The Australian won the race to gain 25 points.

Norris won back three points in controversial circumstances in Italy last time out. McLaren instructed Piastri to let him through after a slow pit stop for car number four.

Piastri benefited from a defensive undercut and admits that he didn’t deserve to beat Norris in the race. But the race highlighted the unique challenge Andrea Stella and Zak Brown are facing this season.

‘Groundswell’ of opinion in F1 paddock that McLaren may be favouring Lando Norris

In Hungary just before the summer break, Norris was allowed to adopt an alternative one-stop strategy, allowing him to come from behind and beat Piastri. It’s rare that teams allow this kind of divergence when their two drivers are fighting for a win.

F1 paddock insiders thought Piastri had the right to be upset with McLaren afterwards, even if he made no public complaints. And the controversy at Monza has fed the ‘groundswell’ of opinion that the Woking outfit are favouring Norris.

That’s according to the BBC’s Andrew Benson, who was speaking on the Chequered Flag podcast. There’s no firm evidence to support this theory, and Benson personally gets ‘no sense’ that McLaren prefer one driver, but some think Norris may inadvertently be receiving better treatment.

He said: “I want to be very clear about this – this is not my opinion, I’m just reporting what people have said in the paddock – there’s a bit of groundswell of people saying, ‘It feels like McLaren are favouring Norris a bit’.

“I don’t know, I’m not privy to the internal workings of McLaren, but every public utterance they make, whether it be on the record or when you talk to them privately, there’s no sense of any kind of favouritism being brought into play, quite the opposite in fact. They’re constantly talking about fairness and equity.

“But in the paddock, people are going, ‘It feels like they’re inadvertently favouring Norris, even if they don’t mean to’.”

The one team order even Oscar Piastri would ignore

Norris has been with McLaren since 2019, while Piastri joined in 2023. The Briton has been instrumental in McLaren’s rise from a midfield team to perhaps the most dominant champions the sport has seen.

One journalist wondered if Norris is Brown’s ‘chosen son’ after interviewing the McLaren CEO. This kind of speculation is inevitable in a team who say they have ‘two number one drivers’.

McLaren have persuaded both Norris and Piastri to totally buy into their team-first approach. But Karun Chandhok warns that this will have its limits.

For instance, Piastri will say ‘my radio does not work’ if he’s asked to move over in a hypothetical title decider in Abu Dhabi. Norris only needs to gain seven points between now and then to stay in contention, but will need to be closer to have a realistic chance.