How McLaren stay focused amid favouritism and sabotage ‘noise’

Amidst unfounded cries of favouritism and sabotage, Andrea Stella has revealed how McLaren is blocking out the noise of media speculation and fan accusations.

With both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri at the top of the Drivers’ Championship standings, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella has detailed how the distractions of off-track speculation are being ignored.

Andrea Stella: I focus on the facts

With McLaren taking the approach of trying to ensure absolute fairness and balance between its two drivers, to the point where the prospect of defeat to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is preferable to taking a stance of favouritism, the respective swings in form between Norris and Piastri have resulted in just a single point separating the pair with four race weekends remaining.

With Verstappen looming threateningly, 36 points behind the leading Norris, Stella is in the position of trying to keep both drivers focused on the task at hand, performing at their best, without any question marks or doubts creeping in as to the team’s stance of equality.

Piastri’s form swings in recent weeks have been dramatic, to the point where Norris, who had fallen 34 points behind after Zandvoort, has closed the gap to take the lead over the Australian by a single point.

It’s led to an outcry from fans on social media, suggesting that Norris is the favoured driver within the McLaren team due to his longevity and having ‘put in the hard yards’ after going with the team through its difficult years since he debuted in 2019.

The speculation has even suggested the idea of sabotage of Piastri’s performance, such has been the extent of his drop-off in pace, leading Jos Verstappen to advise Piastri and his manager, Mark Webber, to raise their voices within the team to get answers on what’s going on.

Such noise could distract a team from the task at hand, bringing home the Drivers’ Championship, but Stella said the baseless accusations and narrative around the championship fight are relatively straightforward to ignore, as is the relationship between the two drivers.

“So far, I’ve been lucky enough that we haven’t had many flashpoints at all,” he told the media in Sao Paulo on Friday.

“I think this is, like I said before, thanks to the fact that we have Lando and Oscar on board, and we invested a lot right from day one with Lando, and then with Oscar on setting up the relationship based on the concept of fairness, equality, sportsmanship, and so on.

“This is always the angle that we take, that we adopt in our conversations.

“Definitely, for me as well, it has been a journey in terms of understanding all the subtleties that you need to take into account while managing this kind of mission, which is to preserve the way we go racing, while letting them race, which is what we were trying to do, and kind of embracing the difficulties that come with that.

“I’ve always tried to look at the facts. I focus on the facts. I talk about the facts. Facts are the foundation of all the conversations I have, including the drivers, and we try to make sure that what is noise is very well distinguished from what is factual.

“There’s a lot of noise. Formula 1 is a very popular sport. We all like to talk about sports. I do like to talk about football, and I have become the best manager in the world at football!

“So I know that this is normal, but it’s important that you extract what is factual, and you base it, and you keep everyone focused on the facts.”

As for Piastri, the erstwhile championship leader was bluntly asked on Thursday whether he believes his championship challenge has been sabotaged or compromised by his team. He shut this down, saying, “No, it’s not the case.

“I think the last couple of weekends have been a little bit trickier, but we’ve got pretty clear answers on why that’s the case.

“There aren’t really too many mysteries about what’s kind of happened. I think there are questions on why some differences have cropped up in terms of how I need to drive and stuff like that.

“But everything is explainable. So there’s definitely not that going on.”

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Andrea Stella: Oscar Piastri back to driving naturally

With Piastri setting the second-fastest time of practice on Friday in Brazil, Stella suggested that the Australian driver is back to the natural form he had up until recent races.

“I think Oscar has already provided the answer to this question in FP1 today; he’s been pretty much every time he was setting a lap time that was the fastest in the session,” he replied when asked if Piastri is back to his best.

“He is confident. His comments in the car, his comments in the debrief, go back to the comments where he feels the car, he is in tune with the car, and he feels that what he’s doing generates lap time in a very natural way.

“This wasn’t the case in the last two races, but in the last two races, the conditions, from a grip point of view, and the way the car needed to be driven were quite unnatural to Oscar.

“Actually, he learned pretty rapidly, and it’s been a bit of a shame that he couldn’t show the pace in the race because he was blocked in traffic pretty much all the race during the Mexican Grand Prix.

“So I think we have a very strong Oscar here, and hopefully we’ll be able to confirm this throughout the weekend.”

With another possibility being that Piastri merely began to seize up under the stresses of leading the championship convincingly for the first time in his F1 career, as Norris appeared to during last year’s title fight with Verstappen when the weight of expectation on him grew, Stella said he doesn’t believe his two drivers are feeling the pressure.

“Well, in reality, I don’t think that’s the case,” he said.

“Obviously, both drivers have known for a long time that the car was competitive, so they knew that there was a possibility to fight for the championship.

“But I don’t see that this is escalating into anything more than focusing each of them on their own weekend and trying to extract the maximum.

“We talk a lot. We talk a lot with the team. Obviously, this requires a high level of dialogue, but this is something that we normally can do well at McLaren.”

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