Norris vs. Piastri: David Coulthard pinpoints key change McLaren should make in teammate rivalry

David Coulthard says he’d like to see McLaren make one key change to its approach in dealing with the rivalry between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

Norris came out on top of the intra-team battle at McLaren in F1 2025, but there was very little to choose between him and Piastri during their third season together as teammates.

David Coulthard: The engineers should not be giving drivers hold instructions

Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust.

McLaren’s now-infamous ‘papaya rules’, combined with amenable personalities from both drivers, have managed to keep a peaceful and harmonious relationship between the two, despite becoming championship rivals.

The Woking squad opted against issuing team orders in the battle for the F1 2025 championship, with Norris and Piastri free to race, provided their adherence to the internal rules of fairness laid out to them.

This meant that the two shared victories and took points from each other, a situation that could have been costly as Max Verstappen and Red Bull found their groove in the second half of the season and came back strongly to almost wrest the title away from both.

McLaren’s occasional influence on the situation involved instructions such as holding station at potentially risky moments, such as Piastri’s attack on Norris as the pair negotiated traffic in tricky conditions in Australia, or opting against a switch of positions after Norris barged past Piastri on the first lap in Singapore – an incident that triggered short-lived “consequences” for Norris at the following round.

While vociferous fans took to social media to complain about perceived favouritism, Piastri made it very clear in the media that he did not feel as though he had been treated less favourably than his teammate.

With the status quo set to remain the same for F1 2026 as McLaren aims to continue its winning streak, Norris seeks to make it back-to-back titles, and Piastri targets a maiden title, there can be little argument that the team’s approach to controlling its dynamics has been successful so far.

But, for multiple Grand Prix winner and former McLaren title protagonist David Coulthard, who drove for the Woking-based squad between 1996 and 2004, he’d like to see one change made in terms of how the battle is handled.

“The only criticism I would have is that I don’t like when the engineer… because that bond between the driver and the engineer, for me, has to be absolute,” he said on the Red Flags podcast.

“I’d liken it to if you guys are in the trenches together and someone blows the whistle back in the day to go out and fight the enemy, you’ve got to know that you’re both going at the same time.

“You know you’re not hiding behind you, and you’re there shoulder to shoulder. So that relationship between driver and engineer has to be unbreakable, that bond.

“So I think that, when they do give ‘Move over’ or ‘Don’t race’ type instructions, that should come from the team principal or the sporting director. It should not come from the race engineer.”

According to Coulthard, Norris should have full confidence in his engineer Will Joseph, and Piastri in Tom Stallard, that their best interests are being fought for by their side of the garage, rather than an instruction being issued to them by the engineer from higher in the organisation.

“The driver should absolutely believe that his engineer would say, ‘That’s not my job. My job is to get my driver winning, and I will only give instructions that can help with that. But I’m a professional and, therefore, if there’s an instruction that is going to get my driver to hold position, that has to come from someone else in the team’,” he said.

Coulthard confirmed this was the way it worked during his time with McLaren, whenever instructions to work with teammate Mika Hakkinen or Kimi Raikkonen came through: “It was Dave Ryan that told me, rather than my engineer, Dave Ryan was the team manager. So I always believed in my engineers that they would do everything to get the advantage my way.”

More on Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri

Norris opens up on title win and ‘stupid things’ said about Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton

Oscar Piastri can now look back on Alpine saga with ‘some laughs’

But, aside from that, Coulthard said he’s thrilled to see how his former team has allowed battle between its two drivers, giving both every opportunity possible to attain individual glory without compromising the team’s position.

“I think it’s a credit to McLaren that they’ve had these intra-team battles over the decades, because they have an attitude of, ‘let’s get the two best drivers, ‘” he said.

“At Ferrari, under the [Michael] Schumacher era – and I know because I was offered a contract which said I would be number two to Schumacher…  Aimed with everything we know now, I naturally would have been number two to Schumacher, but it was impossible for me to sign a contract that committed that.

“Eddie Irvine was happy to do that. Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa, they had a lot of success, and they were Ferrari drivers.

“But I think that at McLaren, Prost/Senna and all of the other big battles they have had between teammates, it’s because they genuinely just want the best drivers and then try and manage them somehow.

“I believe that they’re giving equal opportunity in terms of machinery,” Coulthard added.

“I truly believe in McLaren, and I think all credit to Zak [Brown] and Andrea Stella and all of the team and guys that I worked with, like Rob Marshall and Peter Prodromou.

“They built this winning culture again, and it’s beautiful to observe.”

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.
You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!

Read Next: Verstappen vs Hamilton: Coulthard chooses his GOAT in World Champion shootout