With the win, McLaren cruises past Red Bull to lead the 2024 Constructor’s Championship. The big question now is: Who’s #1 at McLaren?
After winning the 2010 British Grand Prix, driver Mark Webber famously declared that the result “wasn’t bad for a #2 driver.” Yesterday in Baku, the same could be said of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri after he won the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. But there’s more to this story—much more.
With #1 driver Lando Norris competing for the 2024 Drivers World Championship. McLaren asked Piastri to play a support role for the remainder of the 2024 Formula One season. But that request didn’t mesh with race circumstances in Baku because Norris started Sunday’s race in 15th place while Piastri began in the second slot.
Piastri made the most of his front-row start. Then, going into turn one on lap 20 of the race, Piastri made an outstanding late-on-the-brakes overtake on race leader Charles Leclerc of Ferrari. Reminiscent of fellow Australian Danny Ricciardo’s philosophy that “you just lick the stamp and send it,” Piastri’s move caught everyone by surprise, including Leclerc.
With the race on, Piastri used all his defensive driving skills to hold off Leclerc for the remaining 31 laps. It wasn’t easy as Leclerc applied intense and persistent pressure, showing great ability and maturity. But in the end, Piastri, who is only in his second F1 season and a veteran of fewer than 40 GPs overall, maintained the lead to win his second Grand Prix, which is (by the way) the same number that Norris has won in 121 GP races.
So, who’s #1 at McLaren? With the win, Piastri is 94 points behind leader Max Verstappen and trails Norris by 35 points. With seven races remaining in the 2024 season, it’s conceivable that Piastri could mount a title challenge to both drivers. But, again, there’s more to that story.
While it’s undebatable that Norris and Piastri are currently two of Formula One’s best drivers, history tells us that the situation does not always end well when two drivers from the same team compete for a Drivers Championship in the same season. McLaren is painfully aware of what can happen because it happened twice to that team–in the late 1980s with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost and again in 2007 with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. In 2007, it cost McLaren the Drivers and Constructors Championships as the team was infamously excluded from the Constructors Championship for the ‘spy-gate’ controversy.
McLaren, which has not won the Constructors Championship since 1998 or a Drivers Championship since 2008 (Lewis Hamilton), is desperate to end both droughts. However, championships happen when team members work harmoniously together.
Norris is the sole McLaren driver who has a realistic chance to claim the 2024 title, so it makes sense for the team to support him. But there is also the need to take a long view: Piastri is showing that he is a world champion in the making.
Can McLaren manage both drivers’ world champion ambitions while simultaneously staying atop the standings in the Constructors Championship? That question makes for a yeasty finish to the Formula One 2024 season.
