F1 News
Norris happy to race against Piastri: 'But there are limits'
Lando Norris has revealed that he does not see himself as the number 1 driver at McLaren, nor will there be any 1-2 driver roles established within the team's dynamics. Speaking to GPblog and other media present, he claimed that McLaren F1's "papaya rules" were scrapped, at least for the start of the season.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are set to be teammates, at least for the foreseeable future, with the Australia extending his contract with McLaren for the long-term. ''[It's super super important for everyone. I mean, for myself and Oscar, it's also just a good feeling knowing that you're gonna be here for a long time.''
Free to race but there are limits
The Englishman joked: ''At the minute, we're both gonna be here till till we go gray. So that's a good thing. But also from the management side of things for Andrea [Stella, team principal, ed.], Zak [Brown, CEO, ed.] a lot of the guys who who give us the car to go out and perform. So we have stability, and stability is one of the best things in the world.''
''In an environment that is so explosive and so many things can happen, it's a strength that we have compared to all of our other competitors and teams, is that we're all gonna be here as a team and united for a long time when they're gonna be looking at other things. So, yeah, it's a strength that we have for the minute.''
With the many on-the-limit moments that the McLaren pair experienced on track last season, the Woking-based team introduced the so-called "papaya rules". Will we see them again this year? ''There are no papaya rules. At the minute, there's nothing. We're just free to race. We're happy to go against each other and compete. Of course, we have to know that we're we're gonna be [racing] against each other a lot this season, and I hope we are.''
''helping one another and always giving each other good amount of room, racing fair, those kind of things. And that's something that was our strength last season, and we need to maintain that," later concluding that: "Of course we want to beat each other, that's what matters, but there are limits you can't cross when you are teammates. We have to keep both cars whole on the track and make sure we both finish in the points and push each other to the limit.''
This article was written in collaboration with Hidde Korte.
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