Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris both feel they have enough freedom to fight each other for the drivers’ championship and do not agree with negative reactions to pit wall interference.
McLaren ordered Piastri to move over for Norris after the latter had a slow pit stop in the Italian Grand Prix that cost him a position to the championship leader. Piastri duly obliged despite flagging that slow pit stops had been deemed part of racing by the team, and says either choice made by McLaren would not have satisfied every observer.
“Ultimately, I think my biggest takeaway from Monza was that on pace and my own performance that weekend, I didn’t deserve to finish higher than third, regardless of what else happened in the race,” Piastri said.
“Obviously, the decision that we made as a team, there’s no right answer to that decision. If we had done the opposite thing, then you’d have the opposite half of the fans saying that that was wrong, and vice versa. So, ultimately, there’s no kind of correct decision in that.
“Am I surprised? Not really. Obviously, it’s a big moment from the race, and I feel like a lot of fans are quite quick to jump on things that are deemed controversial. So, I’m not that surprised, but I do think we have enough freedom to control our own destiny in the championship.”
With McLaren on the verge of wrapping up the constructors’ championship this weekend, Piastri says talks have taken place since Monza that clear up any questions that were raised in the last race, but doesn’t expect a different approach once the team has secured the title.
“Naturally, there’s been thoughts, yes,” he said. “We’ve had good discussions with the team. Obviously, a highly talked-about moment. We’ve had a lot of discussions, clarified a lot of things, and we know how we’re going to go racing going forward, which is the most important thing. What’s happened is done and I’m excited to go racing again.
“Not necessarily [going to change] because of the constructors’ championship, but I think we’ve had a lot of discussions about how we want to go racing. And a lot of that is to stay for us because, ultimately, if we give out that information, then we become very easy targets to pick off because everyone knows what we’re going to do. So, that’s all very aligned with all of us, but it stays in-house.”
Norris pointed out that McLaren’s call from the pit wall in Monza did not preclude the drivers from fighting each other once the position swap had taken place, and that they are almost always left to race by the team.
“For 99% of things [we’re free to race], but of course how things then look because of something that happened last weekend gives everyone a very different opinion or oversight on things,” Norris said. “What happened in Hungary last year was a very similar thing – the driver in the lead has priority in a pit stop sequence. That’s exactly what we were [addressing] last weekend. Those things don’t change.
“As soon as we just re-established the position, Oscar could race me freely, and still had the advantage of starting basically on my gearbox and trying to race me, so he still gained overall. But otherwise, we’ve been free every time to race. It’s just in one lap of a pit sequence when the lead driver always has priority – that’s how it’s always been and that’s how it continues to be.”
Like Piastri, Norris says it is to be expected that any decision made by the team would come in for criticism, especially given McLaren’s dominance of both championships.
“Not in the world that we live in nowadays, because that’s all people want to do, is be negative and talk badly about others. So, honestly, it’s not a surprise,” he said.
“You also need headlines, you also need people to read things, so it’s not a surprise at all from my side. But it also doesn’t affect us as a team. It’s what you expect nowadays and I think in the world that we live in, it is more negativity than positivity.
“We continue to do things our way. Whether people agree with it or not, it’s not our problem and we don’t really care about that. So, we’re happy, we focus on ourselves. Of course, you always want good things to come out of it. The team are trying to do a good thing. Whether people agree at the end of the day is not our problem.
“We want it to be fair, we want it to be equal for both of us. And then people can comment whatever they like after that.”