Has McLaren really been leaning toward Lando Norris in this title fight? Depends where you’re standing in the papaya grandstand.
The latest flashpoint came in Singapore, where Norris clipped Max Verstappen off the line and then banged wheels with Oscar Piastri in the accordion. Team boss Andrea Stella waved it off as a consequence of the Verstappen tap; Piastri’s radio tone suggested he wasn’t thrilled. And that was enough to reignite a season-long suspicion among some fans: that Norris gets the longer leash, and Piastri gets the lecture.
On paper, Piastri’s still the one with the upper hand. He leads the Drivers’ Championship by 22 points with six weekends left, which tells you how consistently sharp his year has been. But the racial memory of 2025 is loaded with little moments where the pendulum seems to swing one way.
Australia was an early eyebrow-raiser. As the track dried and Piastri reeled in Norris, McLaren asked the Australian to hold station through traffic. Sensible risk management, sure — but it cooled Piastri’s charge and never quite unfroze.
Imola was trickier. Piastri led early, was flipped onto a two-stop on Lap 14, and watched Norris run long. A Safety Car, a better-timed stop for Norris, and suddenly the fight was reversed. Clean, explainable, and agonising if you were in the No. 81 garage.
Canada was different. Norris hadn’t felt at home with the car in the early part of the season; a suspension update helped. He hunted Piastri late and tagged the back of him on the straight. No damage that ruined the day, no meltdown from the pit wall. Norris took the blame and apologised. That one de-escalated quickly.
Austria and Hungary showed the other side of the McLaren doctrine. Piastri was told to cool it after a lock-up while attacking; later, as he chased down Norris in Budapest on the faster tyre, the radio reminder came back: remember how we go racing. Stella’s line has been consistent all year — race hard, race clean, don’t touch — and he’s repeated the “let them race” mantra so often you could hear it in your sleep. The subtext? They’ll tolerate risk until it looks like it’ll boomerang on the team.
Silverstone stung for Piastri. A Safety Car, a penalty for excessive braking, Verstappen getting him down the Hangar Straight, and a pit sequence that left Piastri paying the price while Norris inherited track position. McLaren argued the “natural order” had to stand once the penalty bit. Piastri urged a swap; the call never came.
Spa and Hungary, part two, were strategy chess. Piastri took mediums to the end at Spa while Norris chose hards against the pit wall’s initial preference. It left Norris stalking, but the Australian held him off. Budapest flipped: Piastri’s two-stop, aimed at undercutting Charles Leclerc, became the wrong horse when Norris nursed a one-stop into the window. No team orders there, just divergent thinking and drivers free to try something different.
Monza was the hornet’s nest. Norris had the pace on Sunday, but McLaren pitted Piastri first despite him running behind. Norris agreed — team first, cover Leclerc — but his slow stop gave Piastri track position. The call came: give it back. Piastri was prickly, pointing out that slow stops are part of racing, then ceded. No love lost, but both played ball for the team.
And then Singapore. Norris’s elbows were out at Turn 1, the McLarens touched, and unlike Austria or Hungary, there was no immediate public wrist-slap for the Briton. Against a season of Stella’s “respect your teammate” soundbites, that silence grated.
So, is there bias? The honest read: McLaren has largely stuck to its “let them race” creed, even when it’s tied itself in knots trying to be scrupulously fair. The drivers have been allowed to diverge on strategy, pick their compounds, and race wheel-to-wheel. The messy bits — Safety Car timing at Imola, the one-stop masterstroke at Hungary, the Silverstone penalty, the Singapore start chaos — tended to break in Norris’s favour. That’s perception, and perception matters, but it isn’t the same as intent.
There are two notable stats that fuel the feeling: Norris has twice made contact with Piastri this year (Canada and Singapore), while Piastri hasn’t touched Norris. And there have been multiple races where Piastri ran ahead and ended up behind through circumstance. The counterweight? Norris has eaten the uglier mechanical luck: a brake issue in China that wrecked a late charge at Piastri, and an engine failure at Zandvoort that, by some reckonings, accounts for most of Piastri’s current advantage.
If McLaren secretly preferred a winner, they’ve done a poor job cashing it in. The Constructors’ fight is their real currency; both drivers are locked in long-term. Picking a side for the Drivers’ title makes no strategic sense, and, internally, everyone has repeated the same line: equal machinery, equal opportunity, minimal interference — unless the team’s at risk.
The one misstep was Singapore’s optics. When the golden rule is “don’t touch,” the lack of a public rebuke for Norris jarred with earlier radio nudges directed at Piastri. Call it clumsy management rather than a smoking gun.
What this season’s really shown is how fine the margins are inside Woking’s orange bubble. Piastri’s been razor-sharp all year; Norris has been electric on Sundays but tripped a few times in quali or the opening laps. Add strategy split calls, imperfect pit stops, and the odd Safety Car roulette, and you’ve got a championship that looks skewed one week and balanced the next.
Six to go, 22 points on the board for Piastri. If McLaren keeps its nerve — and its drivers keep their wheels to themselves — this title won’t be decided in a briefing room. It’ll be settled the way Stella keeps promising: by two fast drivers racing, hard and clean, until one blinks.
