Damon Hill provides McLaren with F1 team orders solution and predicts Lando Norris ‘trouble’ against Oscar Piastri

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella and CEO Zak Brown know one of the toughest decisions of their racing careers is approaching.

Formula 1 is full of tales of two teammates vying for the drivers’ championship, and McLaren have been at the centre of many of these battles.

Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna fought incessantly during their time as teammates, while Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso’s tussle in 2007 ultimately cost both of them the championship.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri could be the latest McLaren pair to find themselves in the same situation.

Norris currently leads Piastri in the championship by 13 points, with each driver having already won a Grand Prix this season.

McLaren are dominating the constructors’ standings already, but both drivers know that there’s another threat looming.

Just as Kimi Raikkonen nicked the title from Hamilton and Alonso in 2007, Max Verstappen is hoping to win his fifth championship on the bounce in an inferior Red Bull.

Damon Hill has predicted why he thinks both McLaren drivers might struggle to stop the Dutchman despite their current pace advantage.

READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri’s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend

Damon Hill predicts Lando Norris ‘trouble’ in battle against Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen

Hill was a guest on The Fast and The Curious Podcast and was asked if he believes either of McLaren’s drivers have what it takes to beat Verstappen.

He responded: “Yes, I think they’re both very, very high calibre.

“I think they have yet to develop the mettle in the sense of their battle-hardenedness to fight for a championship.

“It’s much, much harder than anything you’ve done up until now in your career.

“Winning a Grand Prix is great, it’s a great threshold to cross over, but to fight for a world championship, it requires you to deprive yourself of every other source of joy in your life almost.

“It is literally almost a total concentration on one thing. If you listen to Nico Rosberg talking about what it took to beat Lewis Hamilton, he shows the levels to which he had to go to raise his game.

“The trouble with Lando is, he’s in the same team as Oscar, so he’s got that to contend with as well as beating Max.

“And in some ways, Max can divide and conquer, he can run rings around them a little bit, whereas they can be slightly mesmerised or distracted by their own teammate.”

READ MORE: McLaren driver Lando Norris’ life outside F1 from parents to celebration

Damon Hill tells McLaren how to team with team orders conundrum

In two out of the first three races this season, Piastri has been told to hold station despite catching up to the back of Norris.

At the Australian Grand Prix, Piastri sat back while Norris was dealing with lapped traffic in torrential conditions, while in Japan, the 23-year-old thought he was quick enough to challenge Verstappen with his more experienced teammate stuck behind him.

It’s hard to imagine the situation not becoming increasingly frustrating for Piastri, and eventually, he will have to take matters into his own hands if he wants to win the championship.

Hill was posed the question about how to deal with this situation and explained: “They’re always going to have the problem of how they manage their two title contenders.

“It will get interesting because I’m not sure they’re totally sure how to approach it yet.

“They’re trying to not upset the balance, and I think that when you’re trying not to upset something, you’re nearly always kind of on the verge of it getting out of control somewhere because you can’t keep two people who want to be world champion back.

“They’re going to have to at some point let go of the reins and go, ‘OK guys, you’re racing, what we don’t want to do is give points to any other teams.

‘We don’t want to give points to Red Bull or Ferrari.’”

Ultimately, Verstappen will feel he has the chance to benefit from the tough choices facing McLaren this year, although the sooner they back one driver, the more difficult it will be for the Dutchman to win five in a row.