McLaren plot smart scheme when Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri ‘lose’

McLaren says it will sit down with both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to decide how it will deal with whichever driver loses the 2025 Formula 1 title.

Norris and Piastri now appear to be in a two-horse fight for the championship, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen having slumped nearly 100 points with a slew of difficult races.

While this means that a McLaren driver is now almost guaranteed to win the title for the first time since Lewis Hamilton’s success in 2008, the team is also mindful of the emotional toll the outcome could have on the driver who comes up short.

As such, it will hold an early meeting with both Norris and Piastri before the championship is decided, giving them a chance to explain what kind of emotional support they will need in case of a title defeat.

“They both can smell the championship, and only one can win it, so I'm sure it'll be hard on the one that doesn't win the championship, assuming the other one does,” McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown was quoted by the BBC.

"We'll just sit down and actually have a conversation, and go: 'Right, one of you is going to win, and it's going to be the best day of your life, one of you is going to lose, and you're going to be [devastated], how do you want us to handle that, how do you want us to act?

"We'll be very considerate about that approach, because that's the way we think, it comes back to thinking about our people.”

Lando Norris 'narrative' is wrong, McLaren say

Piastri has led the championship since the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in April, but Norris has brought the gap down to just nine points going into the summer break with a run of three victories in four races.

The latter’s championship credentials have been under scrutiny, with critics pointing to his habit of self-blame as a weakness that could end up losing him the title to Piastri.

However, Brown pushed back against claims that Norris is mentally weaker than Piastri, labelling the “narrative” as “not accurate.”

"Lando's open, he kind of wears his emotions on his sleeve, so to speak," he said. "Everyone's different, but he's in a great place. I've never seen him in a better place. He's doing an awesome job."

He compared the current commentary about Norris to a previous one, in which some observers claimed he was not capable of winning from pole position - after a handful of victories slipped away last year.

Brown said: "The ‘he can't win from pole stat’ - now that he's won four, or five races, from pole, no-one seems to be talking about that."