Piastri says conflicting aims make F1 'a bit of a weird sport'

Oscar Piastri has given his view on the competing demands in Formula 1, balancing team spirit and the selfish needs of individual drivers, and being transparent with fans while also holding team secrets close.

“Motorsport is a bit of a weird sport in that, in some ways, it’s an individual sport within a team sport," Piastri said in in an recent interview with GQ magazine about his second full season with McLaren.

The team is performing strongly and is just eight points behind Red Bull in the constructors championship with eight Grands Prix still to go, starting with next week's race in Azerbaijan.

Both Piastri and Norris have won maiden races this season, leading to a tension about who should be given number one status if they're to be able to mount a successful big to catch Max Verstappen in the driver's title fight.

For Piastri, that tension shows how drivers are required to put the team first while also being selfish in their own objectives. The start of the Italian GP was a case in point when Piastri passed Norris on the first lap.

• Read also: Norris has "changed a lot" but insists "I'm still myself"

"In the position we’re in, fighting for the championship and an outside chance for a drivers championship, that adds a completely different element to what we’ve had in the past as a team," Piastri acknowledged.

"It’s pretty straightforward to understand that we are a massive team, and there are the ambitions of thousands of people here as well as millions of fans.

"We have a very strong chance of being able to win the constructors championship so it’s pretty straightforward to focus on that," he said. "There’s a very big picture at play.

"[After all], I’m just one of the two guys that gets to drive the car," he added modestly. “Hopefully I can make a bit of an extra difference on track as all the drivers do. It’s a very cool position to be in.

"But as a driver there is also an element of selfishness in there which is partly what makes us strong as drivers,” he said. "If you make your car quick enough you get the opportunity to balance both."

The feeling in the paddock is that the team is close to having to choose between its two drivers in terms of implementing team orders, under what has up to now been dubbed "papaya rules".

This highlights another issue in the sport, which wants to be open and inclusive with its fans but which is is also bound up by confidentiality and intellectual property (IP) agreements across almost every area of its operations.

"Ultimately, even the way you go racing - the conversations and the agreements you have with your driver - they are part of your IP," McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told media including PlanetF1 at Monza last week.

"We want to be open, we want to be transparent, give everyone some understanding of what is going on. But we also want to retain some sort of confidentiality for ourselves.

When it comes to future team orders, Stella said: "We want to retain integrity and fairness in the way we go racing. We want to apply common sense, but at the same time we definitely need to be in the quest for both championships.

“If we win both championships, it’s a massive boost and benefits the whole team," he argued. "Even if [Oscar] is the other driver, even the support he gives to the team or to Lando, for him it’s an investment.

"Don't forget that Oscar is in the middle of his second season," he added. “The future is Oscar’s, okay? You need to make sure [it's fair] when it’s the time to support [him].

“I think it will be if the things we say are sensible, according to the principles I said before, like fairness."

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