Andrea Stella says briefing hasn’t got tougher as F1 title fight intensifies between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, but admits McLaren has some homework to do.
With the F1 title fight slowly becoming a two-horse tussle between McLaren teammates Norris and Piastri, the team will have to tighten up its screws so that there is no fallout between the two drivers. So far, it hasn’t been as dramatic apart from few minor hiccups.
The two drivers still put Red Bull and Max Verstappen in the mix, but the Dutchman will have to stretch his legs to push himself in until the end. Piastri has the upperhand as things stand after a step up from last year, with Norris struggling with few things, especially in qualifying.
McLaren team boss is not so worried at the moment and doesn’t see things getting tensed in the drivers’ briefing as well. They are in the same tune as last year with the ‘papaya rules’ until and unless there is one clear winner, like they tried with Norris in 2024 against Verstappen.
“The briefing is not getting like tougher, the conversations are the same that we always have obviously when the two drivers start one next to each other and there is an 800 meters to corner one you might have to reiterate every detail of the way we go racing together,” said Stella to media.
“But so far, I just can only be very grateful to Lando and Oscar who have approached this internal competition with a great sense of responsibility and pretty much sticking to the letter to what are our racing principles and approach.”
The qualifying in Barcelona hinted on a very small tension when Norris was able to take a tow from Paistri in Q3, but Stella didn’t think of it by too much. He did admit that it wasn’t something that was discussed and so McLaren certainly has a homework to be on alert with those types of things.
“It was a minor situation,” said Stella. “We always tell our drivers like don’t leave anything in the back of your mind anything throw it out say what you think. In this case, I think that Oscar’s comment was to highlight a situation that we didn’t discuss before in itself is not anything too controversial.
“But we sort of did not discuss that before and we don’t want to surprise our drivers with situation that we didn’t discuss before. So a little bit to take on for the team rather than for the drivers, we have to do some more homework and be ready even more for the coming races which surely will be interesting,” summed up Stella.
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