McLaren set to introduce team orders to support Norris title bid

AFP | Baku

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Mc Laren are poised to introduce team orders to support Lando Norris’s bid to beat Max Verstappen to the drivers’ world title in this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Widespread reports following a BBC interview published yesterday in which McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said the team would “bias our support to Lando ” made clear they were abandoning a policy of non-interference.

“The overall concept is we are incredibly determined to win, but we want to win in the right way,” Stella said. “We (will) bias our support to Lando, but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles. “Our principles are that the team interest always comes first.

Sportsmanship for us is important in the overall way we go racing. And then we want to be fair to both drivers.” Briton Norris is 62 points behind three-time champion Verstappen of Red Bull with eight Grand Prix races left this year, plus three sprint races. His McLaren team-mate Australian Oscar Piastri is fourth, 106 points adrift of the Dutchman, and has played a prominent part in the team’s resurgence to move within eight points of Red Bull in the constructors’ title race.

But given a freedom to race without interference, the driver ’ have lost points in some races where their duels allowed an opportunity for other drivers as in the recent Italian Grand Prix at Monza won by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

The two McLarens started the race with a lockout of the front row of the grid. On current form, McLaren may be the fastest team in Baku and overhaul McLaren to topple Red Bull from the top of the teams’ title race for the first time in more than two years.

Verstappen, who dominated last season’s title race with ease, has not won in six races since the Spanish Grand Prix in June. Stella, an Italian former Ferrari engineer, said both drivers had accepted the decision. “When I said to Oscar ‘would you be available to give up a victory?’ he said ‘it’s painful, but if it’s the right thing to do now, I will do it’,” Stella said.