One Point. No Favors. Norris-Piastri War Begins.

Stella swats away sabotage noise as McLaren backs straight fight between Norris and Piastri

If you’re looking for a grand conspiracy in orange, Andrea Stella isn’t playing along.

After a Mexico City weekend that swung the title pendulum back toward Lando Norris, the McLaren team principal moved quickly to stamp out social media whispers that Oscar Piastri is being short-changed in the run-in. Four race weekends remain, starting under the neon in Las Vegas, and Stella’s message was blunt: the next tracks won’t hand either driver a built-in advantage.

“No reason to think one may favour one driver or the other,” he told reporters in Mexico. And you get the sense he’s tired of saying it.

Norris leaves Mexico with the championship lead again, by a single point over his teammate. It was earned the hard way: a lights-to-flag masterclass while Piastri could do no better than fifth, a 15-point swing on a day when the Brit didn’t put a wheel wrong. The bigger talking point, though, was Saturday. In qualifying, Piastri was adrift—six tenths off Norris—after a similar gap in Austin the week before. That’s been the wedge for the keyboard detectives.

McLaren’s explanation hasn’t budged. Conditions, not conspiracies. “Hot tarmac, sliding tyre,” as Stella put it. Norris found lap time in the slither. Piastri, a driver who really comes alive when the track is grippy and the car’s nailed to the floor, didn’t. Twice in a row.

To their credit, McLaren didn’t just shrug. Overnight work after quali in Mexico left Piastri sharper in race trim, according to Stella, who praised the Australian’s quick adaptation to a car that wanted to dance around rather than sit still. The problem? Traffic. He spent too much of Sunday tucked up behind other people’s gearboxes to show it.

That’s been Piastri’s year in miniature. Blistering one-lap speed—seven poles on the board—but not always the sweet spot when conditions go off. Stella was frank: this is about adding tools to the toolbox. Learning to make pace when the car’s on a knife-edge. Piastri’s heard the message. After the race he called for “major” changes; you could read that as frustration, or you could read it as a 24-year-old who knows what he wants from the car with four weekends to go.

The bigger picture is where McLaren’s tone turns bullish. Mexico didn’t just stop Max Verstappen’s run of taking chunks out of both orange cars; it reassured the team they still have, on their day, the quickest package on the grid. Verstappen beat Piastri but couldn’t live with Norris, and while the Dutchman’s deficit was trimmed relative to Piastri, it grew compared to Norris. Inside Woking, confidence in the drivers’ title “has increased,” Stella said. Less about the maths, more about the weapon in their hands.

Las Vegas is next, and it’s a humbling reference point for McLaren. Last year’s race exposed some nasty graining and setup compromises. Stella called it “a challenge” and admitted they had to learn on the fly. That history might be the most convincing rebuttal to the bias chat: if anything, the team’s first job is making sure the car behaves, full stop, before worrying about who it might suit.

There’s also the political tightrope. Zak Brown has been adamant all season that McLaren won’t pick a winner internally. He’s even said he’d rather lose the drivers’ crown than pull one of his guys out of the fight. That stance has aged well as the points gap shrank to, well, one. In a sport that loves a grudge as much as a trophy, the team knows it can’t win the court of public opinion. If Norris takes a chunk out of Piastri, it’ll be bias. If Piastri returns the favor, it’ll be favoritism. They’ll keep their heads down and let the lap times talk.

The truth is simpler and, for neutrals, a lot more fun. Momentum has been ricocheting between McLaren’s garage halves for months—first Norris, then Piastri, now Norris again. Four rounds to go. A one-point spread. A car that can dominate one week and demand improvisation the next. If there’s another swing coming, it’ll decide this championship. And it won’t need a shadowy subplot to do it.

One clean fight, across four very different weekends. Settle in.