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Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris (right) will be taking points off each other all season - Andy Wong/AP Photo
Helmut Marko has done a lot of talking in the last week. Red Bull’s octogenarian motorsport adviser has been busy doing the rounds, on the radio and in the papers, defending the team’s decision to jettison Liam Lawson after just two races and bring in Yuki Tsunoda.
Marko’s latest (self-serving) justification was to pin the blame on Adrian Newey for not promoting Tsunoda sooner, claiming the now-departed engineer was “furious” with the Japanese for a crash in Mexico last year, which hurt Max Verstappen’s chances in that race. “From then on, Yuki was a red rag to him,” Marko told Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung. “But now Newey is gone and Yuki has worked hard on himself.”
Anyway, while there is justifiable intrigue within the F1 community to see how Red Bull’s decision pans out in Suzuka this weekend, it was something Marko said almost as an aside during one of his many interviews, which was potentially of more significance as far as this year’s title race is concerned.
“With an eight-point deficit after two races, nothing has really happened yet,” Marko noted of the drivers’ championship, in which McLaren’s Lando Norris leads Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. “Aside from the fact that Norris and Piastri will hopefully continue to steal points from each other for some time, a truly Verstappen-friendly track is coming up...”
Marko may or may not be wrong about Lawson and Tsunoda, but he is definitely not wrong about Norris and Piastri. If the first two races of the year are anything to go by, McLaren’s two drivers will be taking points off each other all season.
Norris leads the drivers’ championship on 44 points, with Piastri fourth, 10 points behind the Briton. But that is largely down to the fact that Piastri spun during the rain-affected Australian race, finishing ninth as Norris won. Until that spin – which of course he ultimately has to take the blame for – the Australian had looked to be a threat to Norris, even being instructed to hold position at one point after he closed.
In China, Piastri was clearly the more comfortable of the two McLaren drivers, finishing second in the sprint and winning the feature race.
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Oscar Piastri leads Lando Norris during a dominant China Grand Prix - Reuters/Tyrone Siu
Piastri’s form raises a fascinating question as we head to one of the fastest and and most entertaining circuits on the calendar – if McLaren maintain their mechanical advantage over their rivals, which of their two drivers is favourite to win the title?
The consensus within F1 up until now has generally been that Norris has fractionally more outright pace than Piastri, while the Australian is perhaps the more composed of the two. Is that fair? And if so, which of them is the more likely to improve on his weakness? Norris his mentality or Piastri his pace?
“I think Oscar at the moment has got the edge,” Guenther Steiner, the former Haas team principal, admitted on the Red Flags Podcast this week. “In China, he showed he has the edge. All the time he was better so, I don’t know, maybe Lando didn’t like China. If I would have to put money on the world champion now, I would put it on Oscar Piastri.”
One thing is for sure, now would be a good time for Norris to reassert himself over his team-mate. The 25-year-old can write off China as a track that does suit him all he likes, exposing his weakness with understeer and lack of front end grip. But it was a track on which he beat Piastri by more than 40 seconds last season.
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McLaren CEO Zak Brown (centre) has promised no team orders unless one driver is out of the title running - Formula 1 via Getty Images/Bryn Lennon
With McLaren promising no team orders until one or the other is well out of contention – indeed, Piastri’s new contract is said to guarantee that – we could be set for an intra-team battle royal along the lines of those we have seen previously at the Woking team: Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, or Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. History suggests those battles can often end in tears. Marko will certainly be hoping that is the case. Red Bull are in the firing line now, but if McLaren squander the fastest car on the grid this year, focus will shift.
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