McLaren chief Andrea Stella has dismissed Christian Horner’s claim that having two drivers in title contention is a disadvantage. But he admitted he may have to “upset” either Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri by favouring one over the other at some point this season.
Max Verstappen beat both to victory in Japan last Sunday, after which Horner suggested his Red Bull outfit benefits from having just one driver gunning for glory. Stella insisted yesterday that the opposite is true but said he “can’t exclude” the possibility that he will have to anger one of his drivers with an order which benefits the other.
The McLaren team principal said: “There are advantages to having two extremely competitive drivers. I think the advantage in the long term is dominance – that’s what you want, in my view.
“But there could be episodically some situations which may leave one of the two drivers a little upset because the team needed to make a decision, or because of how the race unfolded.
“So we are very, very aware of this. Internally, we don’t talk about, ‘If this happens’, we talk about, ‘When this happens’, because we are aware it’s a very difficult business. We are aware as a team, and Lando and Oscar are aware as well.”
Norris was frustrated after the Japan race and felt his team should have tried something different. He spent most of the race on Verstappen’s gearbox but at no point did he look likely to make an overtake stick.
On Thursday, the Brit implored his team to be more “attacking” in its approach and Stella agrees that they could have been more “aggressive”. But he caveated that by pointing out the “significant risk” that would have come with more forceful tactics.
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Stella said: “In the early phase of the race, we could have potentially been more aggressive in attempting to undercut Max. This would not have been executed without a significant amount of risk – going in traffic at a circuit where you have low degradation and difficulties to overtake.
“It could have gone pretty wrong in case of a safety car, and in an attempt to win, you may lose a few positions. So it’s the normal kind of trade-off that you have when you manage race strategy. But we need to be wary that Suzuka in 2025 wasn’t the usual Suzuka. I think many people who made comments struggled to realise that it’s a different context.”
Norris remains at the top of the drivers’ standings and has yet to finish a Grand Prix lower than second place so far this year. But Verstappen’s win in Japan brought him to within just one point of the Brit.
Piastri is in third place, 13 points behind his team-mate. The top three have taken one victory each, with Lewis Hamilton the only other driver to have tasted such success in 2025 thanks to his sprint race win in China.
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