With four wins from six races for Oscar Piastri, some corners of F1’s fandom are already turning to cries of favouritism at McLaren – but does it stand up to scrutiny?

Piastri’s incredible start to the F1 2025 season has seen him open up a 16-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship, with the Australian slowly but surely staking his claim to be the McLaren driver who can topple Max Verstappen.

Oscar Piastri is now more than a match for Lando Norris

There’s a popular meme circulating on social media at present, in which Zak Brown is pictured with his two drivers, with the caption being “Piastri and whats-his-name are equal in my eyes”. It’s clearly been created as a tongue-in-cheek jibe at some McLaren fans who have taken to social media in recent weeks to complain about perceived favouritism within the ranks at Woking.

To quote the great German band The Scorpions, there has been a blowing of a wind of change over recent months at McLaren – a team eager to win its first drivers’ championship since 2008, and not likely to care too much which of its drivers does it.

Last year, it was evident that Lando Norris had the upper hand on Piastri in a few areas – enough to earn McLaren’s support in the quest to bring down Verstappen as Piastri eventually fell far enough behind to make it worthwhile to back a single horse. It made sense. With Red Bull fully behind Verstappen, the dilution of points across Norris and Piastri through the middle part of the season did make Norris’ quest more difficult, and this was realised – although perhaps too late.

Piastri still suffered from the occasional off-day, putting in race days where he would be a little anonymous compared to Norris. Largely, this was down to Piastri going through the growing pains of being a top-level F1 driver, finding those tiny little details and the minutia of understanding the tyres over a race distance – areas in which Norris’ experience kept him ahead.

But Piastri has addressed that weakness and, after the first quarter of the season, it’s clear Piastri is now a capable match for Norris. So improved is he, that perhaps Piastri is now actually the superior driver, with his laconic personality drawing comparisons to Kimi Raikkonen’s taciturn brilliance at McLaren 20 years ago.

It’s not all that long ago since Netflix’s Drive to Survive had a clip of McLaren CEO Zak Brown saying that this could be the “start of the age of Lando Norris”, but a fundamental dynamic shift within McLaren has occurred over the last six months.

Certainly, until last year, it was Norris who had put in the hard yards with McLaren, fighting hard when the car wasn’t great, rising in his own stature as a driver alongside a team that slowly but surely grew in confidence and self-belief – a team that was learning how to become winners again.

But it was Norris, not McLaren, who crumbled under the pressure in last season’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix to all but end his title challenge, in a year where, in practice, he had a superior car to Verstappen for most of the season.

Since then, Piastri has signed a new, long-term deal which will keep him at Woking until 2028 – a deal currently longer than Norris’. This may have been a team built around Norris originally, but he no longer is the defacto team leader.

Piastri is going absolutely nowhere any time soon, and Norris has arguably lost the chance to have kept McLaren’s support solely focused on him off the back of their relative starts to this year, despite having done the perfect job of seizing the initiative in Australia.

In the tricky conditions at Albert Park, Norris weathered everything thrown at him by Piastri and Verstappen and, at a point where Piastri did look to have a slight pace advantage, team orders came through to hold station as the two cars negotiated through traffic – an interlude which spoiled Piastri’s rhythm, before the late-race mistake that ended his challenge for the win.

Bouncing back from that, Piastri was untouchable in China – although it would have been intriguing to see how Norris may have fared had late brake issues not hampered his race.

Verstappen got one over on both of them in Japan, with the McLarens circulating nose-to-tail – with Norris in front – for the entire race. Qualifying decided this one and, at a circuit that rewards driver skill and bravery, it was Norris who had the upper hand in Q3 by 0.032 seconds.

It’s since then that Piastri has really started to double down on his strong start, with three peerless weekends in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Miami. On weekends when Norris wasn’t maximising the car with messy flying laps in Bahrain and a crash in Saudi Arabia, Piastri was controlling proceedings and, even more impressively, controlling Verstappen.

It hasn’t been since Charles Leclerc in 2022 that a driver appears to have figured out how to handle Verstappen’s stubborn defensive style but, in Saudi Arabia and Miami, it’s Piastri who has come out on top after clinical displays that showed he was able to second-guess the Dutch driver and, more importantly, show a knowledge of the updated racing guidelines – an area that’s usually a key Verstappen strength.

McLaren’s MCL39 less comfortable for Lando Norris

So, given that Piastri has been the cleaner, calmer driver over the first quarter of this season, why the cries of favouritism from Norris fans?

The crux of this appears to come down to how the winter changes to the MCL39 which have elevated the Woking team beyond any of its rivals have played into the hands of Piastri, rather than Norris.

Team boss Andrea Stella has spoken about how Norris is experiencing “episodes” when pushing the car to 100 per cent, such as in qualifying, with moments where the car doesn’t respond in the way he expects – meaning he isn’t driving as naturally as he was towards the end of last season.

“I think there are just certain things which don’t allow me to feel what I need to feel. And those things are what allow me to drive to the level that I can drive at. To get pole positions and to drive at the highest level in racing,” he said in Miami, when asked if the DNA of the McLaren fundamentally suits Piastri more than him, or whether Piastri has simply adjusted better to its demands.

“We’re talking about small things. It’s not like it’s impossible to drive all of a sudden. It’s just when we’re talking about qualifying, split by hundredths of a second, thousandths of a second. That’s what I’m complaining of. And nothing more than that.

“So yeah, it’s not one I can probably just give you a yes or no answer to. I think he’s maybe more naturally able to adapt. And I also think it’s the driver’s job to adapt to whatever car they get given. But there are compromises. And the team is also there to try and help you get the most out of the car.

“But it’s clear there have been some changes. And whether it’s just suited Oscar, or Oscar’s really done to do a better job at adapting.

“Then that’s not for me to kind of know or try and figure out or waste my time on. But yeah, for me, it’s actually hurt me a little bit more. And I’m not being able to perform at the level that I was at the end of last season. Which I think is the best level that I’ve been at.”

What’s clear is that the combination of the MCL39 and Piastri is a match that flows more naturally than that of the MCL39 and Norris at this point in time. With McLaren having worked diligently over the winter to unlock more speed and a better understanding of how to control tyre temperatures – a key strength for them this year – the steps to unlock more speed have worked.

But why would McLaren risk compromising those findings by crafting the car’s direction in favour of either driver, potentially compromising on outright speed, rather than just setting the pair loose in the fastest possible car and letting their talents decide the outcome?

After all, with it becoming increasingly clear just how key the ability to control the tyres has become to be the fastest over a race distance, Piastri’s progress in this area was highlighted by Stella in the aftermath of Miami.

“Looking at the way Oscar is mastering and managing tyre degradation at the moment, [there is] no way that this improvement would come simply from the car,” he said.

“The only way to exploit the improvements we have made with the car, they take place only when the driver somehow understands what to do with the tyres and with the car.

“This has happened, not by chance or not because Oscar is getting a little older, this is because there’s been a lot of work done by the engineers in terms of understanding the driving style, how you damage the tyres, and how you can prevent damaging the tyres.

“I think this is a testament to the quality of the work done by Oscar and the team around him.”

But, as has so often been the case this year, Norris wasn’t forgotten in this praise, “When I say so, like even from Lando’s point of view, I think we have seen that there are definitely improvements and, if anything, in the final stint on the hard tyre, I could see that, at times, Lando was, if anything, even a little faster than Oscar,” Stella said.

At this point in time, it simply makes no sense for McLaren to have focused on finding speed with its car and risked compromising that by making changes with the weaker driver (from 2024) in mind. The more logical conclusion is that, with a car that’s quicker but a little trickier, the more versatile driver is better able to handle it.

So… just like at Red Bull, then.

Will McLaren eventually face a 2007 situation?

The last time McLaren was in this position was in 2007, but with a precocious Lewis Hamilton coming into F1 alongside an established two-time F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso who expected to be given the lead driver treatment – only for it to blow up in everyone’s faces.

McLaren’s clear desire to maintain parity between its two similarly aged and similarly pedigreed drivers has succeeded so far since becoming F1’s standard-setters about a year ago. There hasn’t yet been a disastrous fall-out between Norris and Piastri, who appear to get along well as contemporaries, with the only tensions really happening around last year’s Italian Grand Prix prior to McLaren starting to intervene in backing Norris.

Piastri’s manager Mark Webber knows all too well the damage that can happen to a driver’s reputation if their teammate gets the upper hand, and Webber’s experience of having been beaten by Sebastian Vettel in a team which clearly favoured the German will have been passed on to younger Australian.

But there hasn’t yet been the flashpoint that’s inevitable when two drivers are scrapping for glory and when that time comes, even inaction can be seen as taking a preferential stance – as Webber discovered.

There’s also the fact that Norris tends to wear his heart on his sleeve, with the plaintive bleating of self-effacement when he hasn’t performed at his best – in stark contrast to the aggressive confidence of Verstappen and the calm stoicness of Piastri – and this may hand his rivals a slight edge in the psychological battle.

And, perhaps unintentionally, Piastri’s less effusive delivery style could be somewhat more placatory when that flashpoint comes.

There’s no reason to believe that there has been any favouritism towards Piastri up to this point – he has simply performed to a higher standard than Norris. One driver will always perform slightly better on any given occasion and, rather than turning to the unfounded finger-pointing of favouritism, Piastri deserves all the plaudits he’s earning as he has come out swinging against both Norris and Verstappen.

It’s far from a gulf between them but, as many champions do when given the right equipment, he’s starting to maximise the package beneath him in a way Norris hasn’t managed just yet.

That’s not to say Norris can’t turn it around though and, certainly, at this point, there’s nothing stopping him from doing so – McLaren has no need to impose team orders in a season where the points gaps back to any rival continue to grow.

But the season may be playing out differently than what Norris envisaged – rather than him being McLaren’s hero, leading Woking to its first Drivers’ Championship and robbing Verstappen of his crown in the final year of this regulations era with a pliant Piastri as his teammate, he is stumbling with a car that is undeniably the most versatile and consistently quickest on the grid.

All while, at the same time, his young teammate – who hasn’t ‘served his time’ in quite the same way – is now rather difficult to beat and, on top of beating Verstappen himself, is proving to be the driver holding him back from his dream of becoming World Champion.

If the season progresses in this same vein, it’s inevitable that McLaren will eventually make a call that favours one of its drivers, or a clash between Norris and Piastri will occur.

“Time will tell,” was Norris’ response to the idea of their partnership turning into something like Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s intra-Mercedes fight almost a decade ago, while Piastri acknowledged the elephant in the room.

“Yeah, we said that we’re trying to repeat 2007, so… I don’t know,” he said.

“We clearly know that we have our strengths. It’s always been close between us. It’s going to be a good battle. There will be weekends where Lando is stronger, and weekends where I am stronger.

“We’re very aware of the fact that we want this success for as long as we’re at McLaren, which is a very long time for both of us. We’re aware there’s going to be a fight.

“We both want to become world champion, obviously. But we don’t just want one opportunity at this success. We want it for the next however many years, and that’s an important and an easy thing to keep in mind for us and the whole team.”

Unfortunately for Norris, this is a battle that is only likely to become more difficult. With every race that goes by with Piastri in front, it’s one opportunity less for Norris to stop the momentum shift that’s currently going in his teammate’s favour.

With McLaren’s car the best on the grid, Norris has found himself in a position where failure this year could define a large percentage of his entire F1 career if Piastri gets the better of him. With not much chance of McLaren giving him a hand in quite the same way as last year and, perhaps by season’s end, finding himself playing a supporting role, turning things around from here would only make a championship victory all the more impressive.

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