As Piastri rebuffed the challenging Russell very firmly into Turn 1, it allowed Norris to swoop around the Mercedes, putting McLaren 1-2. Piastri eased himself out of DRS range and then just drove to the gap back to his team-mate, keen not to take any more than necessary from the supposedly delicate front medium compound tyres. But with each passing lap it became clearer that the tyre behaviour was very different to that of the previous day. There was a little bit of graining – more for Norris as he sat in the disturbed air of Piastri’s wake – but nothing like the day before. The rubbered-in surface of the track had eased the strain.
When Piastri and Norris switched to the hards on laps 14 and 15 respectively, it was better again, moving the strategy towards a one-stop. Better yet, Norris felt transformed. “I hate understeer,” he related, “but as soon as we got onto the hard tyre, I had a front end.” This was potentially game-changing. He’d been briefly undercut at the stops by Russell but dealt with him easily enough a couple of laps later and now his focus was on his team-mate. This was a winnable race, he believed.
Switch to hard tyres brought one-stop into view
McLaren
So his game plan was to conserve the tyres as much as possible (while staying out of Russell’s reach) so as to have some energy still in the tyres in the last 12-15 laps when he would launch an attack on Piastri. But Piastri was still just driving to Norris’s pace, suspecting he knew what his team-mate was up to. So with both McLarens just cruising looking after their tyres, ready for their battle later, their small advantage over Russell undersold how quick they were in reality.
That much became apparent when Norris was asked to create a bit more of a buffer over the Mercedes and Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, to prevent any repeat undercut if the race did switch to a two-stop. He pulled out a second in two laps – which of course brought him into the dirty air of Piastri. He requested that the team ask him for Piastri to create a gap in turn for him. Eventually Piastri acceded to this request. But it was by now clear to both drivers that this was building to a late duel.
Celebrating a team 1-2 with MCLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown
McLaren
“We’ve got different strengths and weaknesses as drivers,” said Piastri after the race, “and I think this weekend there were certain points where it naturally worked in my favour. There have been other weekends where it definitely hasn’t and I’ve had to try and look at things from how Lando’s driven and apply them. That’s definitely an advantage in having a strong team-mate. You always learn from each other. It’s impossible to measure how much lap time you gain from pushing one another but you do gain something for sure. I’ve certainly learned a lot in the last couple of years and maybe there was some learning the other way yesterday.”
“Apart from from Ferrari I don’t think there’s another team with drivers who push each other as much,” said Norris. “It’s a huge advantage… We have different ways of driving. Oscar’s ability to adapt to a track like this was impressive and something I struggled a lot more to do. But the car came to me today, especially when we put the hard tyres on and I felt I had the best pace of anyone.”
The duel didn’t happen unfortunately, as Norris’s car developed a brake pressure leak, giving him an increasingly long pedal. The wheel-to-wheel McLaren fight will have to wait for another day. But it’s coming – and the advantage looks set to swing between them. With a world title in their sights.