Does Lando Norris Deserve Number 1 Driver Status?

Lando Norris does not deserve clear number 1 status within the McLaren team, even for his escalating title fight with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

That is the view of former Red Bull driver Robert Doornbos, in the wake of the Italian GP.

At Monza, Oscar Piastri pushed the bounds of McLaren’s new so-called “Papaya rules” by passing pole sitter Norris – his teammate – on lap one.

The pair then pushed so hard, according to seven time world champion Lewis Hamilton, that they ruled out the winning one-stop strategy successfully executed by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

“They were doing much too fast laps early on and killed their tyres,” said Hamilton. “I was getting the information of the times they were doing, and there’s no way your tyres are going to last at that pace.”

Not just that, many pundits said after the race that McLaren is making a clear mistake by not giving Norris undisputed number 1 status in his quest to close the now 62-point gap to Verstappen.

Australian Piastri is a further 44 points adrift.

“I thought it was interesting that the British press stood up for Norris,” Doornbos told Ziggo Sport. “I completely disagree with them.

“McLaren cannot favour one driver, because Oscar Piastri will not accept it and he was simply the faster driver in Italy.”

In contrast, Doornbos said Norris makes “too many mistakes” to be consistently favoured by McLaren.

“If you are flawless, and you keep the lead in the first lap – which he did not succeed in doing, and that was the seventh time in a row – then you can maybe ask for it (number 1 status),” said the Dutchman.

“But right now, he is not worthy of having the team fully behind only him. You can’t be going off in the second Lesmo, and you have to make sure you don’t almost smash the sign into pieces when you enter the pitlane.”

On the other hand, Norris’ only real hope of becoming the 2024 champion is if McLaren instructs Piastri by policy to never take points away from his teammate.

“We’ve always believed in having two number 1 drivers,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown insists. “That has always been McLaren’s way, and it can be very difficult to manage.

“You know how it was with you and Lewis,” Brown told his Sky interviewer, Nico Rosberg. “And we saw it with Senna and Prost.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who grappled with the Rosberg-Hamilton title clash, understands McLaren’s current dilemma.

“It’s a difficult tightrope to walk and there’s no universal truth about how to deal with it,” he said. “Ultimately, you don’t want to lose a championship by three or five points that you could have easily gotten.”

Wolff also thinks McLaren boss Andrea Stella understands the dilemma very well.

“He has seen it all happen several times before his eyes at Ferrari,” he said. “He has that racer’s soul that doesn’t want to do it and wants to let them race, but I think they will come to a conclusion about how they are going to handle it after this race.”