When will McLaren realise that in Lando Norris they have their best chance of winning the drivers’ championship since Lewis Hamilton did it in 2008? Hamilton was 23 then. He’s 39 now. A long time ago.
And when will Lando himself believe it and seize the opportunity? Based on the evidence from Sunday’s thrilling Hungarian Grand Prix, this juicy carrot has not yet sunk deep enough into the psyche of either driver or the team.
McLaren appear to be focusing on the constructors’ championship, which would be a major achievement to win. As well as the prestige, it comes with a prize money of around £110m and, consequently, extraordinary bonuses for staff.
But even this laurel (and the new kitchens all over Woking!) is not the supreme prize of motor racing in the general opinion. That is the prize of the drivers.
This brings us to the reason why McLaren did not act more cruelly and let Norris cross the line first in Budapest. Norris was leading anyway and pulling away by more than five seconds in the closing stages of the race, although his track position was set by the earlier timing of his second pit stop, which allowed him to overtake team-mate Oscar Piastri.
McLaren must take the risk and make it clear that Lando Norris is their number one driver
Norris was told to allow teammate Piastri to pass him in order to win the Hungarian Grand Prix.
If McLaren had not given the order to Norris to let Piastri through, they would have scored the same number of points (43) and would have finished with an identical result: a brilliant double, the first in three years, so they would not have lost anything in the constructors’ championship.
But they should have backed the British driver because he started the day much closer to championship leader Max Verstappen than anyone else. He was 84 points behind; fifth-placed Piastri was 131 behind.
Of course, Norris faces a tall order in trying to beat the almost indestructible Verstappen, the driver of his era. But if that’s a tough job for Norris from a distance, what chance does Piastri have from the foothills of Everest?
Post-race calculations left Verstappen, who finished fifth and in a bad mood, 76 points clear rather than the 69 he would have had had McLaren not given radio instructions to swap places.
I know that Piastri had taken a possible moral victory by making a better start than pole-sitter Norris from second on the grid (although he later went off track). I also know that he was chasing his first Formula 1 Grand Prix win.
But had McLaren had a more imaginative understanding of Norris’s slim but lively prospect of overtaking Verstappen, Piastri would have been told in advance that his role was to support his brother driver.
As Max Verstappen’s nervous behaviour demonstrated this weekend, cracks are appearing.
Verstappen’s vulnerabilities need to be exploited and Norris needs to be able to apply pressure.
The 23-year-old Australian is the junior partner, in his 35th race, of Norris, a venerable 24, in his 117th.
The nature of the season offers another reason for preferential treatment. Verstappen was a force to be reckoned with at the start of the season and offered every guarantee for a nap on Sunday afternoon.
But, as his nervous behaviour this weekend showed, cracks are appearing, partly a consequence of the Christian Horner scandal that rocked Red Bull a few months ago. Those cracks of vulnerability need to be exploited, and that means the Dutchman’s closest pursuer must be allowed to apply maximum pressure.
Extra points add up, and with 11 rounds remaining there’s still time for the gradual accumulation to take hold.
McLaren has always given its two drivers equal prominence, which is a laudable intention that can generate the kind of enthusiasm that was produced in Budapest. But this policy has its inherent dangers. The last time it cost Hamilton (or his team-mate Fernando Alonso) the title was in 2007. Kimi Raikkonen won for Ferrari by one point over the two McLaren drivers as they split their points.
Without a doubt, the most direct route to winning the drivers’ championship is to back a clear number one. That was the Ferrari way, and never more so than in the Michael Schumacher era, when politics bordered on the absurdly partisan.
Eddie Irvine, Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa all took off their helmets in front of the great German. And the procedure persisted beyond that time. The most obvious case was when Massa was told: “Fernando (Alonso, the Scuderia’s new star) is faster,” in the 2010 season at Hockenheim. It was a blatantly obvious change.
McLaren has traditionally given its two drivers equal treatment, but politics has its dangers.
It’s time for Norris and his team to put aside counterproductive mistakes and back themselves.
As for Norris, it’s not hard to say that if he wants a chance of winning the world championship he needs to stop making self-defeating mistakes. Although he’s not a proven Schumacher, he’s in the best form of his life in a McLaren that’s the best car on the grid (for which Zak Brown’s team must be given a lot of credit). Lando needs to find the stamina to match his guns, plus the killer instinct that the best drivers display in cold blood.
Should he have disobeyed team orders on Sunday? No. He was right to play fair, but that doesn’t mean he should have been put in that position (or that he should have put himself in it). It’s time for him and McLaren to back themselves to the max.
