McLaren’s championship fight has narrowed to a civil war, and Andrea Stella is doing his best to pour cold water on any talk of uneven pressure inside the garage.
With 10 rounds left, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris have turned the 2025 title race into a two-car sprint in papaya. Piastri had eased clear early, but Norris has punched back with three wins in four, trimming the gap to nine points. That’s the established pro in his seventh season versus the prodigy in just his third — but Stella isn’t buying the idea that experience automatically makes Norris the one carrying the heavier weight.
“Lando may have a bit more experience,” the McLaren team principal said at the Hungarian Grand Prix, “but Oscar’s quality is to learn very fast.” He pointed to Melbourne as an early snapshot: both drivers quick, Piastri only losing out when rain shuffled the order late on. The wider point is the one McLaren keeps repeating internally — there isn’t much to choose between them now. “Lando and Oscar [are] operating at very, very similar levels.”
There’s also a layer of car nuance behind Norris’s mid-season surge. McLaren tweaked the launch-spec MCL39, and those changes had a knock-on effect on Norris’s natural driving style. The team has since brought upgrades and loosened the set-up window, allowing the pair to lean into slightly different settings without compromising outright pace. Translation: Norris can be Norris again, and Piastri hasn’t lost a step.
“This season we made some modifications… that actually affected Lando’s driving style,” Stella admitted. “We’re pleased that now both drivers can drive to a certain extent in a natural way. They can express their talent.”
If you’re wondering whether this parity becomes problematic, McLaren would argue it’s exactly the point. The team has built a commanding lead in the Constructors’ standings — Ferrari sits a long way back, 299 points adrift — so there’s no incentive to rein things in. A straight fight, clean and hard, sells the sport and suits the team just fine.
The margins will likely be microscopic from here: evolving circuits, subtle set-up splits, a bit of tyre wizardry and nerve under pressure. Piastri’s hallmark is that ruthless, accelerated learning curve; Norris has found flow after wrestling a car that initially asked him to change. Put it together and you get the best kind of problem for a title contender: two drivers in the form of their lives, pushing each other to uncomfortable places — and pulling McLaren toward both championships.
