Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are gearing up for a fourth straight season together at McLaren in 2026.
Their partnership came under closer scrutiny during their head-to-head battle for the 2025 F1 title.
Both drivers established themselves as title contenders early in 2025, thanks to a strong start from McLaren. Norris opened the year with a win in Australia, while Piastri collected five victories across the first nine races.
By mid-season, McLaren had shifted their attention towards preparing for the new regulations set to come in 2026. This allowed Max Verstappen to close what had been a significant gap – he’d trailed Piastri by 104 points and Norris by 70 after 15 rounds.
In the end, though, it was still Norris who edged out Verstappen for the championship by just two points.
Norris and Piastri’s fight over the title also brought some added tension inside McLaren. Team orders in Italy and certain calls made during races in Belgium and Hungary raised questions about whether McLaren were giving Norris preferential treatment over his teammate.
Lando Norris draws comparisons between his rivalry with Oscar Piastri and the Lewis Hamilton vs Fernando Alonso era at McLaren
While Piastri described their relationship as “better than ever” during their 2025 title battle, Norris sees it differently. He recently compared their rivalry to the famously tense partnership between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton during their time at McLaren.
Hamilton made his F1 debut with McLaren in 2007, joining a team that had just brought in Alonso, fresh off back-to-back championships with Renault. That partnership quickly soured, with Alonso feeling that the team was backing Hamilton. It led to tensions that boiled over on several occasions, most notably during qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix when Alonso blocked Hamilton in the pit lane.
Speaking after receiving the Autosport Champion award, Norris said: “The first ever race that I watched was Lewis and Fernando in McLaren, where they had just as perfect of a rivalry as me and Oscar have nowadays.”
“So to watch that [the 2007 British Grand Prix], to see that, remember that’s my first ever race, get to see Lewis on the podium,” he continued. “When you see the fans, you see the energy. And I wondered at seven years old what would be like. Last year I got to live it and to feel it. It was one of those special moments of my life.”
Oscar Piastri May Quit McLaren After 2026 if Situation Doesn’t Change
Piastri is now Norris’s longest-running teammate at McLaren, with the pair set to begin their fourth season together in 2026. Before Piastri arrived in 2023, Norris had spent two seasons each alongside Carlos Sainz and then Daniel Ricciardo.
But that run could be coming to an end, with fresh reports suggesting McLaren are already keeping an eye on Charles Leclerc’s situation at Ferrari as Piastri considers leaving after the 2026 season. Piastri is said to be frustrated by several incidents from the previous year that left him feeling unsupported.
At Silverstone, Piastri was hit with a penalty for a safety car restart infringement that handed Norris his first home win. He’d also asked to swap places during the race, but the team didn’t act on it. Later in Hungary, strategic calls once again fell in Norris’s favour.
The most notable clash came in Italy when team orders instructed Piastri to give back second place to Norris after an earlier undercut hadn’t played out as promised. While he complied, he wasn’t shy about questioning the decision afterward.
The tensions carried over into COTA when McLaren pinned the blame on Piastri for a Sprint collision between the pair. That ruling reversed a previous internal penalty given to Norris following contact between them during qualifying in Singapore.
Read More Like This:
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