Lando Norris says McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri won't need to sacrifice race wins to bolster his title chances, insisting he wants to win the championship by beating Max Verstappen and his competitors “on merit”.
Ahead of this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, McLaren has revealed that it has adjusted it approach to team orders by prioritizing Norris over Piastri based on the former’s 62-point gap to Verstappen, the championship’s leader.
But Norris has made clear that the shift in the team’s policy does not mean that Piastri will be forced to step aside and wave him by at every opportunity.
"In general, probably for lower positions, but if he's fought for a win and he's deserving of a win, then he deserves to win,” Norris said, speaking in Baku on Thursday.
The two-time Grand Prix winner believes that race wins should be earned, not handed over.
However, Norris acknowledged that prioritizing him only for lower positions in the field might hurt his chances of beating Verstappen for the title, but he remains firm in his desire to win on merit.
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"I'm sure it will hurt, but I'm also here to race," he said when asked how he would feel if he were to miss out on the title by a small margin.
"And if a driver is doing better than me and performing, I need to do a better job, so I wouldn't want to take that away from someone.
"I also don't want to be given a championship. Yes, it would be great to have a championship, and on the short term you feel amazing, but I don't think you'd be proud of that in the long run.
"That's not something I want, that's not how I want to win a championship. I want to win it by fighting against Max, by beating Max, beating my competitors, and proving that I'm the best on track. And that's how I want to win."
While McLaren has opted to prioritize Norris, its drivers are still allowed to race each other, although the team has clarified that unnecessary battles, especially early on, should be avoided to protect the team’s overall interests.
"I think there will be certain times when it's just not smart to battle, but if you go into a lap one and that's on your mind, that's the wrong approach," commented Norris.
"I think you both have to go into lap one with the right approach, which is to attack it, to try and go forward. As soon as soon as you start thinking about other things that's normally when it starts to go wrong.”
Looking back at the Italian Grand Prix, Norris reflected on the lessons learned from Piastri’s aggressive move on the opening lap and how it affected the team’s race outcome.
"Monza was a slightly different case,” he said. “We've looked back at that and we've resolved that.
“The main thing is we came out of Turn 4 in first and third, and we had the biggest gap in the world going into the corner.
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