Stella makes Lando Norris ‘driving style’ admission in title pressure response

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was quizzed on whether Lando Norris is under greater pressure than Oscar Piastri to win the title.

Norris may be the experienced head at McLaren, but Stella pointed to how learning “very rapidly” is a key strength of Norris’ team-mate – the Drivers’ Championship leader – Oscar Piastri. Another challenge for Norris to have dealt with was alterations to the MCL39, which impacted Norris’ “driving style”.

Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris: Who will win the title?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

The fight for F1 2025 Drivers’ Championship glory has evolved into a two-horse race between McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

While Piastri had begun to gap his team-mate, emerging as the title favourite, Norris has struck back with three wins in four races. That means with 10 rounds to go, Norris has reduced Piastri’s lead to nine points.

For Norris, this is his seventh season in Formula 1 for McLaren, while Piastri is navigating just his third campaign.

With little to choose between the pair, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was asked whether Norris’ sizeable experience advantage means he is under more pressure than Piastri to become World Champion this year.

“As you say, Lando may have a bit more experience in terms of number of races,” Stella acknowledged, speaking at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“He started the season in Australia with a strong result, but ultimately, in Australia, Oscar was there with Lando.

“Oscar lost points in Australia just because we had the sudden rain in the final part of the circuit.

“I think one of Oscar’s qualities is to learn very fast, very rapidly. He has demonstrated it in his career, winning pretty much first year in all the junior categories. He has demonstrated it at McLaren.

“Now we have Lando and Oscar driving and operating at very, very similar levels.”

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris head-to-head in F1 2025

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

It was just two wins from 10 for Norris before his recent resurgence, and Stella hinted that McLaren did not help the Brit’s cause with their work on the MCL39 car.

“This season, what we have to acknowledge as a team is that we have made some modifications to the launch version of the car that actually affected Lando’s driving style.

“We made some upgrades which mean that right now some of the settings used by Lando and Oscar are slightly different, but we are pleased that now both drivers can drive to a certain extent in a natural way.

“They can express their talent, and we see that they are very, very close. This makes it a great spectacle for Formula 1, this is what we wanted to achieve as a team, and I think it’s going to be very interesting until the end of the season.”

McLaren has built an impressive lead at the head of the Constructors’ standings. Their nearest rival Ferrari sit 299 points adrift in P2.

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