Oscar Piastri has revealed that his sturdy relationship with McLaren F1 teammate Lando Norris hasn’t been impacted by their intense struggle for the title.
Heading into this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, Piastri trails his teammate by 24 factors.
Piastri was within the driving seat within the title race after Zandvoort, main Norris by 34 factors.
Nonetheless, since then, Piastri has completed on the rostrum simply as soon as.
Inevitably, there have been a couple of flashpoints between the pair all through the season.
Norris bumped into the again of Piastri on the Canadian Grand Prix, with Norris taking full duty for the conflict.
Norris’ aggressive overtake in Singapore additionally irked Piastri, resulting in repercussions that had been later dropped by McLaren.
Talking overtly about his relationship with Norris, Piastri mentioned on the Past the Grid podcast: “I believe it’s both precisely the identical or, truthfully, most likely higher than it has been.
“It’s higher, if something, as a result of we simply know one another extra now we’ve been collectively for our third 12 months as teammates, so we simply slowly received to know one another increasingly.
“Perhaps there are short-lived feelings off the monitor, however I believe we’re each fairly good at simply letting issues die down and once more, leaving issues on the monitor.”
McLaren’s ‘Papaya Guidelines’
McLaren’s guidelines of engagement have been closely scrutinised all year long.
Following Norris’ strong transfer in Singapore, Piastri felt they need to invert the positions to maintain issues honest, notably as McLaren had earlier pressured Piastri to let Norris by means of after a sluggish pit cease for the latter.
On the entire, although, Piastri believes McLaren deserve credit score for letting them race one another.
“I don’t assume it’s that troublesome, actually. It’s the means we’ve at all times operated,” Piastri defined.
“When that’s your default, in the end, it is advisable do one thing totally different to type of not deal with one another equally, which might be tougher in some methods.
“The crew has completed nearly as good a job as they’ll of attempting to be honest and attempting to deal with one another equally.
“We’ve been free to race for the 12 months, which is sweet for us to have it in our personal arms as a lot as we are able to. And I believe good for everybody watching as effectively.
“I believe it’s clearly troublesome while you’re racing your teammate, and, clearly, issues have occurred this 12 months. We’ve come collectively a few instances.”
