Oscar Piastri jokes of repeating 2007 McLaren rivalry with Lando Norris in F1 2025 title fight, as he expands on pros and cons of teammate battle.
Even though there is some chance of the involvement of Max Verstappen and maybe George Russell in the drivers’ F1 title fight, the larger share is most likely to be between McLaren teammates Piastri and Norris. The Australian has a good lead of 16 points on his Brit counterpart.
With the advantage that McLaren posses, a two-way fight is most likely to happen by the end of the year. While there have been instances of them coming close to each other, they haven’t had any larger heated fight thus far, nothing like the last one between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
When asked if the McLaren pair may go the same route at some point, Piastri joked about the 2007 season when the F1 team had Hamilton go up against Fernando Alonso, which resulted in spygate controversy. The Spaniard left the British team after the season in a bitter end to the relation.
In all seriousness, Piastri then expanded how it can go back and forth between them and noted about the pros and cons of fighting a teammate for the F1 title. “Yeah, we said that we’re trying to repeat 2007, so… I don’t know,” he started with a joke. “We clearly know that we have our strengths. It’s always been close between us. It’s going to be a good battle.
“There will be weekends where Lando is stronger, and weekends where I am stronger. We’re very aware of the fact that we want this success for as long as we’re at McLaren, which is a very long time for both of us. We’re aware there’s going to be a fight. We both want to become world champion, obviously. But we don’t just want one opportunity at this success.
“We want it for the next however many years, and that’s an important and an easy thing to keep in mind for us and the whole team. In some ways, yes [it is tougher to fight teammate]. In some ways, no. We know pretty much exactly how one another drives. We know our strong points, maybe some of our weaker points. So from that side you have more information, but it goes both ways.
“We both know we’ve got the same car, so that removes one factor. But there are other complications with having the same car. You can have the same strengths and weaknesses on track. With how difficult it is to follow cars, 9 times out of 10, whoever’s in front at the start is probably going to be in front at the end.
“So it’s difficult like that. Then there’s the pit strategies and whatever that become a factor when you’re in the same team. There are positives and negatives,” summed up Piastri. His teammate, however, decided not to say much other than ‘time will tell’, when asked about the same.
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