Former Williams chief defends McLaren F1 driver management

McLaren's approach to managing its drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, was defended by former Williams team principal Claire Williams.

The Woking outfit has famously decided not to back an individual driver in the drivers' championship and has instead allowed both Norris and Piastri to fight it out on track, with the proviso that they don't crash into each other.

While they have managed to stick to the 'Papaya rules' for the most part, there have been a handful of incidents, such as the Singapore and Canadian Grands Prix, where they have had contact.

"It’s not an easy piece of work," Williams told talkSPORT. "I think that at McLaren, in Lando and Oscar, they’ve got two quite relaxed drivers. But equally, they’re both competitive.

"They both have fought to get to where they are in Formula 1 today. And both of their dreams for many, many years will have always been to win a drivers’ championship and they will take that fight to each other on the race track. But trying to manage that isn’t an easy piece of work.

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Lando Norris, McLaren, Zak Brown, Chief Executive Officer of McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 via Getty Images

"You’re going to have best-laid plans going into every grand prix. You’re going to have the conversations with your drivers to keep it clean, keep it on the race track.

"But, you know, racing is a bit of a crazy business. You don’t know what’s going to happen when the lights go out. It’s not easy to manage and we can all look on a Monday and go ‘why did they make that decision, why did they do that?’

"But all I can say is McLaren on the pitwall will always have the best intentions and try to do the best thing for their drivers on a Sunday afternoon."

Norris leads Piastri by 24 points ahead of the final three rounds of the season. It is not just the McLaren drivers in the running, though, as a charging Max Verstappen has closed the gap to Piastri to 25 points.

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