Lando Norris looks at me as if I am mad. ‘Shut up!’ he says, screwing up his face in mock horror. ‘Shut up!’
I have just asked him whether he thinks his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri deliberately gave up pole position a couple of weekends ago in Spa so he (Piastri) could launch a decisive mugging on him through Eau Rouge from second on the grid, as the Australian did.
Well, stranger things have happened in just the last 20 years of Formula One. Nelson Piquet Jnr crashed his Renault, endangering his own mortality, in Singapore to orchestrate his Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso‘s dubious victory.
Nico Rosberg went up the escape road at Mirabeau in Monaco. A yellow flag came out. He took pole. Hamilton couldn’t get his lap in. Fishy. ‘It’s up to people to decide,’ he shrugged when I once asked him whether he had acted calculatingly.
Michael Schumacher parked up at Rascasse, again in Monaco, that sunny place for shady people. Senior Ferrari figures argued through the night to the stewards that it was not an intentional ploy to stop Alonso seizing pole. Years later one of Schumacher’s defenders confided: ‘Michael knew what he was doing.’
It all goes to show that nothing is impossible in Formula One. But if Piastri lifted for a miniscule fraction of a second, which is not illegal, it would not be the shock of the century, and don’t forget he had taken pole in the sprint race by more than six-tenths the day before, so potentially had a margin to play with.
Lando Norris (right) and Oscar Piastri (left) are locked in a battle to win the Formula One World Championship
They are the two fastest cars on the grid, with Australian Piastri leading the way currently
Norris and Piastri are among the most harmonious intra-team combatants to fight over the title
Yet, actually, it would be a strange twist for one fundamental reason: Norris and Piastri are among the most harmonious intra-team combatants to fight over motor racing’s greatest prize.
Even when they crashed in Canada, a ‘silly’ smash for which Norris accepted responsibility, sparks did not fly off track. It is a one-team, two-horse rivalry without cordite. It is not Senna versus Prost, Alonso versus Hamilton, Hamilton versus Rosberg,
Their boss, chief executive of McLaren Zak Brown, says he expects them to ‘swap paint again at some point’ but he added: ‘I don’t think they’ll properly fall out because of the communication, trust and respect we all have and that they have for each other.’
So what is the nature and secret of the Norris-Piastri dynamic?
A few snapshots. They arrived ahead of qualifying for last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix under the same police escort to the revamped paddock along what was called Bernie Avenue – the final stretch into Budapest’s Hungaroring – before the American owners Liberty Media took over and removed Mr Ecclestone from office, and from the street sign.
Norris and Piastri do not dine together in the McLaren motorhome or see each other in their private lives. They simply rub along nicely.
Each has his own team around him. At Norris’s table is his long-term manager Mark Berryman and loyal trainer Jon Malvern. The heart of Piastri’s party are his managers Mark Webber and Webber’s partner Ann Neal, as well as his Finnish trainer Artturi Similia, known as Arthur.
The two girlfriends were in attendance seven days ago, when Norris won with the help of a one-stop strategy. Portuguese actress and model Margarida Corceiro was with Norris. Piastri’s childhood sweetheart Lily Zneimer, was with him. The two girls sat together in a gathering of WAGS by the paddock coffee kiosk earlier in the weekend.
McLaren boss Zak Brown, says he expects them to ‘swap paint again at some point’ – but doubts they will ever fall out
They do not dine together or see each other in their personal lives but get along well
Central to the cooperative relations are the natures of the men themselves. Norris, 25, does not like confrontation. He wants to please. And he feels responsibility towards the team who have nurtured him since he was small. He is also less extrovert than his public persona projected on Instagram might suggest. He is somewhat shy and self-doubting.
Piastri, a year younger, has dry humour. He appears the less likely to be ruffled. His calm performances this season hint at this, an advantage that has earned him a nine-point lead after 14th rounds of the season with the sport in its summer break ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix on August 31.
But another crucial element to ‘peace in our time’ is the atmosphere inculcated by Italian team principal Andrea Stella, the engineer who leads McLaren’s F1 organisation under Brown’s overarching governance. Stella is the architect of what the public knows as ‘Papaya Rules’ – a phrase coined by Norris’s race engineer Will Joseph over the radio last year. Inside the team, the code is referred to as their ‘racing approach’, and it contains one rule writ large: ‘Don’t crash into each other.’
Otherwise, Papaya Rules is a guiding spirit. It places McLaren before either individual driver.
Stella is experienced in assessing such matters. He saw the strengths and weaknesses of Ferrari operating as a one-man team, namely Schumacher’s and then Alonso’s. And he believes that success is best achieved and sustained by the policy he now applies, not by edict but with driver buy-in.
‘If anything, the relationship between Oscar and Lando keeps improving,’ Stella explained. ‘This is not the effect of a random evolution. This is because we invest in relationships.
‘When I refer to fundamentals of Formula One, relationships are probably slightly less tangible, but are as fundamental as aerodynamics.
‘This involves the relationship between drivers and the team and between the drivers themselves.
Each driver has their own team around them – former driver Mark Webber is Piastri’s manager
Team principal Andrea Stella has insisted that the relationship between the two continues to improve as time goes on
‘If I take the race we had last year in Hungary (where there were fraught radio exchanges after the pit stops distorted the order at the front; Norris finally moved over to let Piastri win), we spent quite a lot of time reviewing that individually with the drivers and together.
‘We tried to learn from each other as much as possible. We reminded ourselves that Formula One is difficult, and we are always going to face some dilemmas.
‘From there, what could we do to improve? As a team that was to make sure we have a framework that allows Lando and Oscar to pursue their aspirations, always protecting the interests of the team.’
Stella remains minutely involved in engineering sessions, and this allows him to ensure that fairness prevails. Each driver shares and studies the data from the other side of the garage.
Stella concluded: ‘I’m a lucky team principal because the two drivers are very reasonable, very fair, very correct, humble, and above all, they understand that we are here not only to pursue our interest in the present but also to protect the future of their own careers and of McLaren Racing.’
It must be emphasised, however, that if the comradeship lasts to the end of the season as serenely as it has so far, it will defy all the logic and history of Formula One. It’s 50/50 on that one.