McLaren given two-fold warning amid ‘harmonious’ F1 title fight

McLaren have been warned that it will be very difficult to retain team harmony as Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris’s F1 title fight hots up.

McLaren have found themselves in the spotlight for their controversial driver swap in the closings stages of the Italian Grand Prix and how they are managing the intra-team title battle between Piastri and Norris.

Piastri, who leads the championship by 31 points with eight races remaining, was ordered to let Norris into second place after a slow pit stop caused the Briton to drop behind his teammate.

McLaren’s handling of the title battle has been the major talking point in the F1 paddock since Monza, and dominated build up to this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok believes Piastri would not have given up the place if the title was on the line.

"There's been a lot said about what happened in Monza. My view is fairly simple. They are trying to keep the team harmonious,” Chandhok told Sky Sports F1.

"What they did was the fair thing in terms of who was quicker. Perhaps what people need to understand is, both drivers have their own mechanics but they all come together for the pit stop.

"What you don't want is, an Oscar mechanic makes a mistake on Lando's car, or the other way around, you then create friction in the pit garage.

"Remember at Mercedes, Toto decided to swap Lewis Hamilton's and Nico Rosberg's mechanics around because there were divisions.

"They have done the right thing to keep everyone in a peaceful atmosphere but let's be clear, if it was Abu Dhabi, there is no way Oscar Piastri or any racing driver would give up a place.

"It's fine for now, but if we get to the last race, it won't happen like that.”

Fellow Sky F1 pundit and three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick added: “Oscar put it well, he said he deserved to be third. Oscar's weekends are not that bad.

"He's so level headed that he's aware that it wasn't a battle he needed to fight that weekend.”

McLaren have ‘clarified’ racing rules

Piastri revealed McLaren have clarified “a lot of things” about how they will go racing for the remainder of the 2025 season.

"We've had good discussions with the team. It was obviously a highly talked about moment," Piastri said in Baku on Thursday.

"We have clarified a lot of things and we know how we are 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.

"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, we will become very easy targets to pick off because everyone knows what we will do.

"That's all very aligned with all of us but stays in-house.”

Meanwhile, Norris admitted he wasn’t surprised to see the negativity and criticism of McLaren’s use of team orders.

“There were some things at that point that I didn’t know about: the undercut from Leclerc [was something I didn’t know] in my post-race interviews at the time. That also played a part in the reasoning of the decision that the team made,” Norris said.

“And the fact it was not just the pitstop which made that decision. It was more so the other things. We both agreed with it after and accepted. That’s what we agreed as a team.

“Not [surprised] in the world that we live in nowadays. Because that’s all people want to do, you know, is be negative and talk badly about others. So, honestly, not a surprise.

“You also need headlines. You also need people to read things. So, not surprised at all from my side. But it also doesn’t affect us as a team. It’s what you expect nowadays, I think, in the world that we live in. It’s more negativity than ever positivity.”