F1 Today | Steiner confused by McLaren, Mercedes put plan away for now

Ahead of this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix, Guenther Steiner, former Haas F1 Team principal, has questioned McLaren's choice to let Oscar Piastri win the Hungarian Grand Prix. Also, Mercedes confirmed Verstappen will not be joining them in 2025, and this NASCAR driver has his say on the Kyle Larson and Max Verstappen debate.

Steiner: 'Piastri won't be world champion'

In an exclusive interview with GPblog, Guenther Steiner admits that he was left confused by McLaren when they convinced Lando Norris to let his teammate Oscar Piastri through to win the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Steiner believes that if McLaren wants to challenge Red Bull consistently to win a world title, they need to "learn winning consistently". McLaren currently sit 42 points behind the world champions, while Norris is 78 points behind Verstappen in the drivers championship.

The Woking-based team have won two races this year, compared to Red Bull's seven. You can read Steiners full thoughts on McLaren's team order situation here, exclusively on GPblog.com!

Verstappen not joining Mercedes for 2025

Mercedes have confirmed exclusively to GPblog that Max Verstappen will not be racing for them in 2025. This comes after Lewis Hamilton's shock announcement that he would drive for Ferrari next season. Rumours have linked Verstappen to the Mercedes seat after the Christian Horner situation at the start of the year, as well as linking current Mercedes junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli to the vacant seat.

Mercedes, however, also confirmed that Antonelli is not a certainty for that 2025 seat, with the team still making the choice over who will partner George Russell next year. The Silver Arrows have already missed out on Carlos Sainz's signature, with the Spaniard signing a deal at Williams.

Hamilton to have a new race engineer at Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton will end his long-time partnership with Peter 'Bono' Bonnington at the end of the 2024 season. Mercedes has announced that Bonnington will be the team's 'Head of race engineering' starting from this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix.

This is the same role that Verstappen's current race engineer Gianpiero Laimbiase holds at Red Bull Racing. Bonnington will continue as Hamilton's engineer for the remainder of the season, and will still provide one of the two Mercedes drivers with instructions and information during races.

Verstappen v Larson debate continues

Last week, NASCAR driver Kyle Larson claimed he could beat the three-time F1 champion. This bold statement brought much criticism for Larson and Denny Hamlin (Larson's fellow NASCAR driver) was the latest to give his opinion on Larson's claim. Hamlin believes that it is impossible to compare drivers across different series and drivers who grew up racing different categories. However, former NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick favours the American in this debate.

Larson has tried his hand at other series outside of NASCAR, most notably attempting this year's Indy500 with Arrow McLaren. Larson, who has 25 NASCAR Cup Series wins, 15 Xfinity Series wins and many others, attempted to compete in both the Indy 500 and NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, before weather at Indianapolis halted his progress.

You can read Hamlin's thoughts in full here!

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