Lando, Oscar and the Drama
A discussion involving team orders
Hello! Welcome to another episode of Formula Curious! Please, make yourselves comfy.
I wrote recently [here] that Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri look like they would rather eat a bucket of shit than start some drama between them. And I have to revisit this. Not because it isn't true any more—it's as true now as it was then—but because even more is being made of the collision between them at Montreal. When I wrote that it was a thing, but it hasn't slowed down and has possibly increased.
F1TV, during one of their pre-something shows, described it as "pure cinema" complete with intense voice. (It also went with phrases like "we've seen this screenplay before" and it's almost as if they are advertising a movie or something.) The even made a wee hype video comparing the LandOscar incident, if you will, at Montreal to Webber and Vettel crashing with each other, and then to Hamilton and Rosberg rubbing wings on tyres causing ruination of someone's race.
The stark difference, and I'm sure you can also see this, is that those incidents from previous years included a lot of anger from both drivers. No one wanted to admit fault and the incidents were taking place within already fraught relationships.
This one, the incident at Montreal, took place in possibly the most relaxed inter-driver relationship on the grid. Oscar wasn't bothered at all by it because he barely felt it, it didn't damage his car at all. Lando immediately took the blame and apologised a bigillion times before he'd gotten out of the car.
Hey, if you’re enjoying these wee bags of nonsense, maybe you could tell a mate about it?
The situations being compared couldn't be more different.
But, as is ever the case, the fact that we had teammates collide is being used in arguments that are already going around, such as:
They have to pick a driver now to beat Verstappen
They need the points for the Constructors' championship
First things first, they're already beating Max. Both drivers are around 50 points ahead of Max currently. That isn't a problem. And thanks to his DNF at the Austrian GP, that continues to not be a problem. Max doesn't seem to think he's in the title fight either, but we know he's a bit fickle. Of course the situation can change, but it doesn't need to affect the McLaren driver approach.
And for point number 2; yea, collisions between drivers takes points away from the Constructor's championship. But McLaren are already leagues ahead of their nearest rivals, in fact they have almost double the points of Ferrari in second place. The 2025 Constructor's title doesn't look at all in danger. Another relevant fact here: they haven't taken each other out. Presently, the McLaren racing philosophy isn't costing them points, and their drivers are well behaved towards each other.
I also noted the gratefulness mentioned post-race Austria towards McLaren regarding letting their drivers race from some of the very same people who also insist McLaren need to pick a number 1 driver.
The McLaren team we have today is a very different creature to that of the 2007. It was abundantly clear there was a lot of animosity between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso back then, and the team didn't seem very enthusiastic about removing that. The team now seem to have figured out a way to support both drivers without creating animosity. It probably helps that both Lando and Oscar are two chill individuals in their own right.
We haven't had an intra-team battle for the championship in a while, and as soon as we get something like it there's an abundance of cries of "just pick one already!"
Small point of fact here, I’m writing this after the Austrian GP, so after Oscar almost taking himself and Lando out of the race with a misjudged/badly executed overtake attempt.
I think the radio message afterward to Oscar effectively saying “not cool, dude” wasn’t really needed. Oscar seemed to have already figured that for himself, and he did apologise for it over the radio afterwards. I think it highly unlikely that that incident will change anything in their driver philosophy.
As viewers we seem to forget that drivers and teams talk to each other a whole damn lot when we can’t hear, so while Oscar was probably going to say sorry to the team in debrief, he considered it important enough to tell the world as well as his team.
I really hope McLaren don’t change their driver philosophy and continue to let their drivers race throughout the rest of the season, because it would an enormous shame of the team decided which driver was going to win the championship instead of the racing.
I also hope that one of the McLaren drivers win the championship to disprove this recurring idea that having a number 1 driver is compulsory.
Thanks for reading and thanks for being here! You are keeping the wheels going on this wee thing, and this wee thing is keeping me going. So thank you.
If you feel so inclined, you can buy me a coffee, perhaps?
Until next time, take care of yourselves!