Guenther Steiner urges immediate McLaren action in blow to ‘favoured son’ Norris

Lando Norris further reduced Oscar Piastri’s Drivers’ Championship lead in Baku, however, the reigning and defending champion Max Verstappen is threatening a comeback.

Verstappen unleashed a pair of dominant displays to win the Italian and Azerbaijan GPs back-to-back. In the process, he reduced the gap to Piastri to 69 points with seven rounds remaining. At this point, ex-Haas F1 team boss Guenther Steiner would be putting Norris into the supporting role to see out a Piastri title win, regardless of any perceived “favoured son” status.

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The Azerbaijan race weekend was a challenging one for McLaren. Piastri hit the wall in Q3, suffered a false start and crashed out on the opening lap, while Norris managed P7 only.

The odds very much remain in McLaren’s favour to take home both titles, but after such a setback, while Verstappen and Red Bull have emphatically returned to form, suddenly, the Drivers’ title race looks slightly open for a late twist.

Steiner, the former Red Bull technical operations director and ex-Haas F1 team boss, cast doubt over Verstappen’s chances of rescuing a fifth straight title as he appeared on the Red Flags podcast.

However, worryingly for Norris, he believes the lurking Dutchman will prove enough for McLaren to give up on their equal treatment of Norris and Piastri, and place Norris into the No.2 role, despite having trimmed Piastri’s lead to 25 points after Baku.

Put to Steiner that it feels implausible that McLaren would put ‘the face of the franchise’ Norris into a supporting role, after making such a point of fairness, Steiner replied: “But it will happen.

“Because in the end, you want to win the Drivers’ Championship as well, not only the Constructors’. And you know, the team is more important than the driver, and the drivers are, as I always say, and not diminishing, just part of a team.

“And both cannot win, so instead of having two fighting and lose it all, you get somebody to win. As much as Lando is the face, and, as you put it, the favoured son, I think McLaren needs to be above that, and will be above that.”

Suggested to him that it seems crazy for McLaren to twist themselves in knots to maintain fairness, only to end Norris’ title quest and play favourites anyway, Steiner added: “It is crazy, but you have to do it.

“In my opinion, you have to do it to win.

“I think they will take the decision, because otherwise, if they lose it because of that decision, how dumb do they look?

“I want to say, I think McLaren should have learned something out of last year, how they did it. It didn’t work. And if they do the same this year… Up to now, it was like, okay, Max is not a threat anyway. It looks good if you let them race. And it’s good, actually. It not only looks good, it’s good for the people which watch it.

“But now, it’s getting to a point where there could be some damage to the team in losing the Drivers’ Championship. So if you run the team, you have to prevent this by putting a rule down to make somebody unhappy. And so it should be.”

So, placed in the shoes of McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, Steiner was asked when he believes the team must make that call.

“I would make it now.”

Asked to clarify that he was saying McLaren should ‘swing the guillotine’ on Norris immediately, Steiner confirmed: “I would do, because I just want to make sure I win the championship.

“I said I think Max cannot get near, but if I already get the feeling there is a risk, why would I take it?”

Steiner added that McLaren making that difficult call would also “send a message” to Verstappen that they “will do everything to win it.”

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McLaren’s commitment to creating a level playing field in the Piastri versus Norris title fight, means it is unlikely that Norris would be asked to stand down and support Piastri. That is as long as Verstappen remains an outside bet for the crown.

What went down at Monza supports that, McLaren having moved Piastri aside for Norris. Piastri had benefitted from a slow Norris pit-stop, who had also stopped after Piastri, despite being ahead on the road.

Nonetheless, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella acknowledged Verstappen as a threat. The extent of internal changes at McLaren in response, will be seen in cutting out errors like those witnessed in Baku.

Both Piastri and Norris hit the wall during Q3, while Piastri’s false start and Lap 1 crash proved a sour ending to a nightmare weekend.

“When you race in Formula 1, when you race at the top of Formula 1, and the competition is so tight, simply, you cannot afford errors in any case,” said Stella, “because there will be your contenders that are ready to take advantage.

“And this before might have been Mercedes, like in Canada. Max, like at the start of the season.

“We don’t have to forget that Red Bull won the two races at the start of the season. And then, if anything, it’s they kind of slipped back in terms of performance, and now they seem like they found their way back, okay, but they were in contention for victories already at the start of the season.

“For us, considering, especially the Drivers’ Championship, certainly the margins to error reduce furthermore. But this is always the ethos when you’re racing in Formula 1.

“So hopefully some of the inaccuracies and issues have accumulated in this weekend, because in this weekend, we have to remember that not only we didn’t have a fast enough car, but we also had some reliability issues that cost Oscar some time during practice. Therefore, quite a lot to take away for the drivers, but also for the team.”

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