Some people turned up their noses. Seeing Lando Norris slow down four laps from the end to make way for Oscar Piastri didn’t please a segment of the public as well as some insiders who have a say in the management of the Circus.
The forbidden dream of seeing a world championship reopen (effectively a door with a crack) fuels many hopes, if Norris had won the Hungarian Grand Prix today he would be at -69 points (instead of -76) from the leader of the standings Max Verstappen. A truly different scenario? Some say yes.
The decisive moment of the Hungarian GP: Piastri slips past Norris with Verstappen on the outside of the first corner
Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
After more than a decade, McLaren is back to targeting a world title, especially in the Constructors’ Championship. The incredible growth led by Andrea Stella and Zak Brawn has put the team in a different playing field, one without many of the problems they have had to live with in the past.
Playing at the top, however, brings other challenges and with them new problems. One of these is the importance of being able to count on an absolute compactness of the working group, including the drivers. If the technical domination is total, as it was from 2014 to 2016 for Mercedes, you can also afford a split box, but if the comparison is with external opponents, team play is a fundamental element.
Now, it is true that Norris left seven possible points in the drivers’ standings on the field in Hungary, but it is equally true that Lando found those points potentially in his hands due to a team error. For 44 laps the track said that the winner of the Hungarian Grand Prix would be Piastri, then a not entirely clear choice at the second pit stop inverted the positions. From that moment Norris felt like the legitimate leader of the race for about twenty laps. Then common sense returned to Lando’s helmet.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
“You have to be selfish in this sport,” Lando said. “You have to think about yourself. That’s the number one priority: to think about yourself. But at the same time I’m also a team player, so my mind was going crazy. In hindsight the team shouldn’t have put me in that position, in the end they put me in the lead of the race, it wasn’t my decision. I would have waited until the last corner of the last lap, to give the position back, then they told me that if suddenly there was a Safety Car I would no longer have the possibility to let Oscar pass, and at that point I would have looked like an idiot. So I thought: ‘yes, that’s right’. And I let him go.”
McLaren decided that seven points in the drivers’ championship was not worth the split in the team, making the right decision in the interest of the climate within the team. It is often thought that the rivalry between two teammates is just a comparison between two drivers, but the history of Formula 1 reports different scenarios.
When a political decision determines hierarchies and results, a rift is created between the working groups of the respective pilots, collaboration and information sharing begins to become increasingly formal and less efficient, affecting the performance of the group.
In a world championship like the one we are witnessing, no team can afford it. McLaren itself has already experienced a similar scenario in 2007, when Fernando Alonso’s part of the box put up a wall to separate itself from the one working with the rookie Lewis Hamilton. The result was that both, in the race for the world championship, were defeated.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
In the year and a half of cohabitation with Norris, Piastri had to give up the position to Lando on more than one occasion, and he did it without batting an eyelid. If things had gone differently in Hungary, Norris would no longer have been able to count on the support of his teammate, creating a significant problem for himself within his own team. Would it have been worth it for seven points?
After the race, Lando spoke well, much better than he had on the radio for over ten laps of the race. “I didn’t deserve to win because of my start,” Norris admitted, “but then again, I shouldn’t have been in the lead either. When you’re in the lead you think that giving it back will cost you seven points, but the team was right. There’s a difference between deserving and not deserving to win a race, and I didn’t deserve to win the Hungarian Grand Prix. End of story.”
Whether I am speaking for the sake of convenience makes little difference, what matters, both for Lando and for McLaren, is being able to face the Spa weekend (and the following ten Grands Prix) being able to count on a compact group. To try to beat Max Verstappen and Red Bull, it is a card that cannot be ignored.
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