Key McLaren contract detail emerges in Norris Piastri team orders debate

Although Oscar Piastri is open to supporting Lando Norris’ title bid, he “absolutely” does not have a number two contract revealed Danica Patrick.

McLaren have faced a team order conundrum this season; criticised for not helping Norris earlier in the season and then criticised for asking Piastri to take on a wingman role.

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It’s a role that the Aussie, who trails Norris in the Drivers’ standings, readily agreed to but he made it clear to his team-mate it wasn’t a “blank cheque”.

He later explained to the media including PlanetF1.com: “I’m trying to help the team as best as I can. So it’s not simply number one, number two. We still have the same car, we still have the same opportunities.”

From McLaren’s side, Brown told Sky F1 that while he appreciates that others have a view on the situation, for the team it’s simply that Piastri will support Norris in the here and now.

“It’s been obviously well spoken about,” Brown told Sky. “Everyone has an opinion.

“I appreciate the people with a beer, a couch and a TV, helping coach how they would run the racing team. Without our fans, we have no sport. Let me be clear about that. But yeah, you know, everyone’s got their opinion.

“I think we are now in a mode with Oscar’s total support of Lando. Lando wants to win the right way. So he’s not too interested in Oscar just waving him by that. He wants to earn the championship.”

And according to Patrick, who spoke with Brown in the build-up to the United States Grand Prix, it’s a changing situation with Brown speaking to his drivers about it race-by-race.

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“Zak said he speaks to Lando and Oscar every day,” revealed the guest pundit, “basically about the dynamic within the team, and that they’re all speaking and agreeing on how it’s going, and it’s really a race-by-race decision as to who’s going to get priority and what’s going to happen during the race.

“So he just does a great job of keeping the energy clean and the team upbeat, and he’s doing that really well with the drivers.”

He also made it clear to her that there is no status clause in either Norris or Piastri’s McLaren contracts.

“He did say that drivers do have that in their contract about their ranking,” he said, “so I asked, ‘Do either of your drivers have that?’

“Absolutely not, but some do.”

Former F1 driver Martin Brundle called the team order debate an “age-old problem that will continue” with F1 being both an individual and team sport.

“You’re an individual sportsperson operating and employed in a team environment,” he continued. “There will always be conflict. It’s guaranteed.

“I heard a comment earlier on in the weekend that if they ran Monza again, they would have run it differently and perhaps not allowed Oscar to attack Lando on the first lap, for example.

“But you’ve got Lando saying, ‘I don’t want any gimmies thank you. I want to win this World Championship because I’m the fastest driver’.

“That contact there in Austria, they both could have done without, especially Lando, but at the same time… Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa got put into a number two driver situation that I’m not sure that psychologically they ever recovered from. You don’t want to do that with Oscar Piastri, he’s got a great future ahead of him.

“So they’re between rock and a hard place. I think they played it reasonably well, but they’ve left points on the table, and that means they haven’t put Red Bull under as much pressure as they should be doing right.”

Red Bull, having been under a bit of pressure, rebounded at the United States Grand Prix where Verstappen outscored Norris for the first time in five races to extend his lead to 57 points while Red Bull outscored McLaren for the first time since Spain to close the gap to 40 points in the Constructors’ stnadings.

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