McLaren gives first hints of Lando Norris being preferred over Oscar Piastri for the 2024 F1 title fight

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella hinted that the team might prefer Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri to fight for the championship this year. The British team has been heavily criticized for not picking Norris over Piastri despite the Brit having a chance of fighting the driver's championship against Max Verstappen.

McLaren has surged up to the top of the sport and has the most balanced car on the grid right now which is competitive on different track layouts. However, despite its car advantage over its rivals, the team has hesitated to favor one driver over the other in the title fight.

Speaking with Autosport, the McLaren team boss answered the questions regarding the driver's championship. For the first time, he spoke about the team choosing the driver with more points in the races, hinting at possibly Lando Norris getting preferential treatment from Oscar Piastri. He said:

“We are fighting Max Verstappen, so I think if we want to give support to one driver, we definitely have to pick the one that is in the best position. And also Lando, he's been doing very well, like pole position in Zandvoort, pole position here [in Monza]."

“If anything with Lando, we need to adjust some little racing things which may help him and may help us capitalize on a pole position like we had here in Monza. I think if you look at his first lap, while we review it together, we might see that there were a couple of things that we could have done slightly better.”

McLaren team boss chimes in on their hesitation of picking Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella stated that having a No.1 driver in the team was not a realistic solution for them as it only works in getting headlines.

As quoted by the aforementioned source, he said:

“I think number one kind of works well as a headline, but I'm not sure it works very well in the real world in terms of what does it mean? What do you do? It's just very difficult to implement this definition in the real world."

Stella further believed that having a competitive package on all circuits could be a weapon for Lando Norris in his quest for the driver's championship in the 2024 season.

Norris failed to convert his pole position into a race win despite his title rival Max Verstappen finishing the Italian GP in P6. The 24-year-old's P3 could only yield him 16 points, as he got the fastest lap at the end, and closed in by eight points in the title battle with the gap coming down to 62 points. He currently sits in P2 with 241 points with eight races and three Sprints remaining.