Lando Norris admits that a full-on clash with teammate Oscar Piastri as they battle for the title is inevitable.
Of course, possibly more than any other team, McLaren has a history of ‘friction’ between its drivers, and while one always tends to think Prost/Senna, let’s not forget Alonso/Hamilton.
With his feet now well and truly under the table, Piastri is quietly stamping his authority on the 2025 title, having claimed five victories from the nine races thus far, three of them in succession.
To its credit, the Woking outfit has given its drivers the all-clear to fight, and as the championship intensifies it is inevitable that there will be clashes.
“We never said we’re going to avoid everything,” Norris told reporters in Montreal. “I think we’ve actually been quite open in saying at some point, something is probably going to happen.
“We just have to be ready for that,” he admitted. “I think both Oscar and myself know that, we’re competitive, we want to beat each other but the main thing is we stay strong together as a team.
“Everything is in the open,” he insisted, “everything is obvious, everything is known between us. We both want to win, we both want to beat each other, but at the end of the day there can only be one person and that will be whoever performs best over the course of the year.
“He’s in his third season of F1,” he said of his teammate. “I remember in my third season you just come into the year a little bit more confident and with a bit more knowledge and just a more complete driver. That’s what he’s done and he’s performing well, he’s driving incredibly well and at a very high level and deserves everything he’s been doing at the minute. It’s a good fun rivalry between us.”
As one would expect, Piastri takes a more level-headed approach, looking beyond this year’s title fight.
“Clearly there’s competition and there’s a ‘want to beat each other on track’ mentality,” he said, “but as we’ve said before, we don’t want just one opportunity to try and win a world championship each. We want this to be the case for many years to come and the best way to protect that is by having a very strong team around both of us.
“We’re aware that whatever happens in the championship this year, or how things go, is much bigger than just this season and potentially defines our whole career. We’re very aware of that fact, of course we still want to beat each other and win a world championship but we know that there’s a bigger picture as well.”
