Oscar Piastri says he is not prepared to sacrifice his own chances to help McLaren team-mate Lando Norris secure the drivers’ championship in Qatar this weekend.
Piastri lies 24 points behind Norris heading into the penultimate weekend of the season, which will feature a sprint race on Saturday worth a maximum of eight points, followed by a grand prix on Sunday worth 25 points.
If Norris cannot beat his two rivals – Piastri and Max Verstappen – by at least two points across the weekend, the championship will roll on to the final race in Abu Dhabi next week, where another 25 points will be on offer.
Norris’s lead is still relatively healthy. But whereas McLaren looked to be fighting among themselves until very recently, the resurgence of Red Bull’s Verstappen, accelerated by the disqualification of both McLaren cars in Las Vegas last weekend, has brought the Dutchman right back into the title equation.
Verstappen is now level on points with Piastri, and within a race win of Norris, and there are those who believe McLaren should abandon their famous “Papaya Rules” – the code by which they go racing, which gives both drivers equal standing – and instead favour their lead driver.
Asked whether there had been any internal discussions since Vegas about whether he might help Norris at any stage, Piastri replied: “We’ve had a very brief discussion on it, and the answer is no.
“I’m still equal on points with Max and I’ve got a decent shot of still winning it if things go my way, so yeah, that’s how we’ll play [things].”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella stressed that also remained the team’s stance. “No, there is no reason to [favour Norris],” the Italian said on Thursday. “We have always said that as long as the maths does not say otherwise, we would leave it up to the two drivers to fight for their chance at the final victory, and that is how it will be in Qatar.
“Let’s not forget that if someone had told us at the start of the season that we would find ourselves in this situation with two races to go, we would have signed up for it! Now we are going to fight for the double world championship with confidence and awareness of our strength.”
Piastri has not beaten Norris since the Dutch Grand Prix at the start of September. At the following race at Monza, the Australian was asked by McLaren to give second place back to the Briton after the team botched Norris’s pit stop.
Piastri, 24, said he was not thinking about that and added that he was feeling “confident” coming to a circuit where he won in the sprint race last year, and which he described as very different from recent tracks.
“Yeah, confident I would say. I think it’s a circuit that I enjoy, a circuit I’ve done well at in the past.
“I think there’s still a chance [of the title],” he added. “It’s played out that way a couple of times before, so I know it’s not impossible. Obviously, I also know that it’s a bit of an outside shot. I can’t just rely on having a perfect final two weekends. I need other things to go my way, and I’m very aware of that.
“So I think for me, I’m just going to try and have the best weekend I can, which I try to do every weekend, and see what happens to everyone else basically.”
Norris, meanwhile, claimed he did not view Verstappen as any more or less of a threat than Piastri and added that he was not treating this weekend any differently from Las Vegas last weekend, despite it being his first “match point” – the first time he can put the title race to bed.
“Nope,” the 26-year-old Briton said. “The gap before [Vegas] was 24 points, and it is still 24. Nothing needs to change. We were still quick last weekend, and would have been quicker without the issues. We know Red Bull have been quick lately, and we expect them to be quick here and next weekend, too. Nothing needs to change from anyone’s side. We have treated Max and Red Bull as a great team and competitor all season.”
Of his disqualification last weekend, for rear plank wear, parts of which were just 0.07mm over the limit, Norris was philosophical.
“It’s the rules,” he shrugged. “Of course it hurt, because there is a lot of effort that goes into a weekend and it made all that effort disappear very quickly. Everyone at McLaren feels let down, and we are disappointed. But I found it easy to move on.”
McLaren apologised to their drivers after that race, and Stella explained that the “unexpected occurrence of extensive porpoising” on the street circuit in Las Vegas had been the main issue.
“From the early laps of the race, it was clear from the data that the level of unexpected porpoising would be a concern,” he said. “We were able to monitor the situation better on Lando’s car using telemetry data, but it was made more difficult on Oscar’s car, after we lost one of the sensors we use to establish the level of grounding.
“We realised relatively soon that this level of porpoising was causing a high level of skid wear energy and this is the reason why both drivers started to take remedial actions in various parts of the circuit [lift and coast]. Unfortunately, we also saw that, because of the car operating window and the circuit characteristics, most of these actions were not effective enough in reducing porpoising.”