Oscar Piastri hints at McLaren tactics with ‘wrong guy on pole’ verdict

With the “wrong guy on pole” for the Sprint race, Oscar Piastri has hinted he may yield to Lando Norris if he’s ahead of him as his team-mate needs the points more.

Norris is locked in a title fight with Max Verstappen, the protagonists separated by 47 points with a maximum of 120 points still in play.

Oscar Piastri: Lando needs the points a lot more than I do

Eight of those are up for grabs in Saturday’s Sprint at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

However, as Damon Hill put it, McLaren have the wrong driver on pole position as Piastri pipped Norris to the coveted grid slot by 0.026s on Friday.

“They have absolutely nailed it,” Hill told Sky F1 after McLaren’s Sprint 1-2.

“McLaren have now got a problem because they’ve got two cars in a very tricky situation with kind of the wrong guy on pole. We’re going to have to see what happens in the Sprint.”

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And what F1 may see is Piastri yielding to Norris.

Although the Australian would like the Sprint victory for himself, he concedes there’s more at stake for his team-mate should they be running in formation with the Briton behind him.

“We’ll see what the pace is like for both of us. I think first and second is the first objective and then we’ll see what order it is,” Piastri said.

“I know that I’m not in the running for the Drivers’ standings, for the team it doesn’t matter which way round we are, so I know that’s the case and we’ll see.”

Asked if would relinquish the win to his team-mate, he replied: “Yes, I’ve said I would from when we first had these discussions. It would be nice to win, but it’s one point different and it’s not the main race, so we’ll see.

“Lando needs the points in the Drivers’ standings a lot more than I do, but of course I still want to win. If I put in the effort and show good pace I’m sure that won’t go unnoticed, but we’ll see.”

McLaren ‘are going to support’ Lando Norris

McLaren’s potential for team orders was one of the big topics mid-season when Norris began to close the gap to Verstappen in the standings.

Piastri’s victory in Hungary, where McLaren told Norris to give him back P1 after the Briton undercut the Australian driver in the pit stop, coupled with his attack on Norris at the start of the Italian Grand Prix had McLaren talking about ‘papaya rules’.

That topic has gone quiet in recent weeks with Norris ahead of Piastri the last three races.

But starting ahead of his team-mate in Saturday’s Sprint, team boss Andrea Stella was asked about the state of play when it comes to team orders.

“In terms of this topic, the situation hasn’t actually changed very much compared to some comments that we made,” he replied.

“Lando is the driver that is in contention for the Drivers’ Championship, so it’s natural that we are going to support Lando. We have always said that we would do that in the spirit of our principles, which lean on to integrity, sportsmanship, fairness to both drivers, and that’s what we are trying to do.

“You will have seen that in both Austin and Mexico for instance Lando had some upgraded parts which were not available for both cars so we gave them to Lando and this is a way of creating support to the driver that is in the fight for the championship.

“At the same time, as part of our approach, we keep having pretty much daily conversations with both drivers because we want to make sure that if some actions are required in a competitive session, this comes with the agreement from both parties because we look at the season, but we also look at the future.”

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