F1 News
This is how Piastri reacted to McLaren announcing team orders
After questions from GPblog, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said in Monza that the British team would try to help Lando Norris to the world title, which made team orders possible. Team boss Andrea Stella tells the BBC that Oscar Piastri has been spoken to about his new role.
At the Italian Grand Prix, Piastri decided to go down the outside of his teammate, Norris into Turn 4, and pulled off an overtake on the Briton. As a result of this maneouvre, Norris also lost a place to Charles Leclerc, and the Briton only finished the race in P3. Therefore, he could only gain eight points last weekend on Max Verstappen, who struggled with the RB20 in Monza.
"Even when I said to Oscar: 'Would you be available to give up a victory?' He said: 'It's painful, but if it's the right thing to do now, I will do it'," team principal now shared the Australian's answer to McLaren's decision to help Norris fight for the title.
"Lando wants to win because he deserved the victory on track," the Italian continued. "It's OK to be occasionally supported by your team-mate, but you don't want to use ways of adjusting the race just for the sake of the points when your teammate is scoring in a way that he deserves. This is not the way McLaren want to win, or the way Lando wants to win," he also underlined.
"If I ask Lando, he would say: 'I am comfortable if in Abu Dhabi [at the end of the season] I miss a few points that I could have got with some actions, but if those actions were not right at the time, then, you know what? We keep strong as a team, the team is stable and cohesive, we will give it a go next year'," Stella concluded. Whether Oscar Piastri will have the chance to help Norris, that will be decided on track, starting in this weekend in Baku at the Azerbaijan GP. The gap between Norris and Verstappen currently stands at 62 points in the drivers' standings, with eight Grands Prix to go.
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