Oscar Piastri contract detail changes everything in McLaren battle
Oscar Piastri’s battle with Lando Norris will decide the F1 championship, and a detail in the Aussie’s contract proves the shackles are off.
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Oscar Piastri is being tipped to seriously challenge Lando Norris for the F1 world championship this year, with a detail in his new contract to ensure the shackles are off when the two teammates go head to head on track.
Norris leads the championship after two races but Piastri bounced back from a disappointing spin at the Australian Grand Prix to win the Chinese Grand Prix and send an early message that he will be a contender this year.
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One former driver believes if Piastri can stay close to Norris in the championship battle and keep the pressure on him, the Brit may falter.
“It’s going to be really interesting,” seven-time F1 race winner Juan Pablo Montoya told news.com.au via Vision4Sport, where you can enquire about exclusive packages to the world’s best sporting events.
“I felt that in Australia, he had all the momentum to get to Lando, and the team told him to hold and then he burned the tyres off. I think it kind of stung him a little bit, and I think a lot of people were like, ‘Oh, that’s a little biased’.
“But I think what he did in China (winning) was necessary. And what you can see in China as well is when Oscar can perform, Lando makes mistakes.”
With McLaren looking like the fastest car in 2025, the season will likely reach a crescendo when Norris and Piastri are allowed to race each other with the championship on the line.
On the eve of the season, Piastri signed a contract extension through to the end of 2028. Part of that new deal is rumoured to stipulate Piastri can race Norris on track and there is no favouritism between the drivers or a No. 2 in the garage.
McLaren came under fire last season for its murky “papaya rules” as they struggled to find a balance between prioritising winning the constructors championship or helping Norris chase down Max Verstappen for the drivers title.
“They cannot give Lando priority over Oscar because of the contract. He has a contract that protects him,” 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve told CardPlayer.
“As long as both drivers can win the championship, there won’t be team orders unless there’s something significantly big for the constructors’ title or if one of them is having an issue in a race like last year.
“It’s important for Lando to go get as many points as possible and keep pushing, because he knows that Piastri in the long run, will be a threat to his championship chances and the battle might just be between him and his teammate.
“That’s always the most difficult when your battle is against your teammate.
“It’s going to get a little bit like Mercedes,” Montoya said, referencing the fierce battle between teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg that saw Rosberg retire immediately after winning the 2016 world championship.
“But I don’t know the contract, I haven’t seen the contracts, but I would say especially with the renewal of Oscar, I think it’s in equal terms.
“So how are they going to pick who wins or are they gonna let them race? And then if somebody screws up, then it’s a big penalty internally.
“If Oscar runs over Lando in a weekend and they both DNF, they might go, you know what, the next five races you need to finish behind Lando and kind of rip the championship away.
“For it to become interesting, Oscar needs to be able to beat Lando on a consistent basis. Lando is going to bounce back for sure. They still have a superior car right now than anybody else. It’s going to be an interesting challenge.”
Piastri said after signing his new contract: “We’re starting from a clean slate, and ultimately whoever is going to be faster out on track is going to be who wins, or whoever finishes higher if it’s not winning.
“We’re very much clear on how we’re going into the season, and that’s racing each other and trying to hopefully fight for wins. It’s all very clear and we’ve discussed a lot of it from last season and how we managed the back-end of last year, and I think this year we’re starting from zero again, we’re both going to be trying our best to win.”
Piastri claimed the first pole position of his career in China and he will need a few more to genuinely compete with Norris, who outqualified the Aussie 21-3 last season.
“It’s not easy to beat Lando, because he’s done it long enough now that he’s very mature and understands it,” Montoya said.
“But if you can get the better of Lando in qualifying and start ahead of him, you can start making a dent in his confidence and every week it’s going to get worse.
“At the end of the day, it seems like most of the races between the two McLarens are kind of defined by qualifying. I think that the race is most of time defined by who qualifies ahead and the team kind of controls them because they go, ‘OK, manage the pace, manage the gap’
“They really don’t want to have an encounter on the track.
“The problem is if you start seeing Lando win one week and Oscar win the other week and Lando next week, you’re going to get to race 15, and somebody’s going to say, ‘hold position’ and you’re going go, no, I’m quicker than him’.”
Qualifying will be crucial for the McLaren pair all season, including at the Monaco Grand Prix, where overtaking is notoriously difficult but a mandatory second pit stop has been introduced this year in an attempt to shake up the race.
“It was always crazy important because it kind of defines the race,” Montoya said about Moncaco.
“I think this year is going to be very interesting because now Monaco is a two-stop race.
“That’s gonna throw a bit of a curveball because you’re gonna have people in the back doing the pit stops pretty much straight away go to a hard tyre and just drive around on a hard tyre and hope for a safety car.
“It’s gonna make it really interesting. Driving in Monaco is insane, it’s so challenging.
“There’s so many blind corners when you go over crests downhills, you’re attacking and you’re being really aggressive. It’s like, oh please, please don’t get it wrong.”
The F1 season continues this weekend at the Japanese Grand Prix, where Yuki Tsunoda will drive for Red Bull for the first time after replacing Liam Lawson.
Originally published as Oscar Piastri contract detail changes everything in McLaren battle
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