McLaren encourage drivers to share their feelings in their quest for the drivers' title

13:44, 03 Jun

byKada Sarkozi

While there were many battles behind, the McLarens could claim a one-two finish relatively calmly after the Safety Car, as they disappeared into the distance. As the championship battle continues between their two drivers, team principal Andrea Stella reflected on the situation.

Oscar Piastri managed to control the Safety Car restart well, and also could Lando Norris behind after, so the Australian driver could claim his fifth victory of the season in Barcelona.

As a result, the gap between the two McLaren drivers stands at 10 points in the standings in favour of the Australian. After the 10-second penalty he received for causing a collision, Max Verstappen was relegated to P10 last Sunday and is now 49 points behind in the standings.

No difficult environment at the Woking-based team so far

While championship battles can be divisive within a team, do talks get harder because of this at McLaren? "The briefing is not getting like tough. The conversations are the same that we always have," team principal Andrea Stella said to GPblog among others. "Obviously, when the two drivers start one next to each other and there is an 800 metres to corner one, you might have to reiterate every detail of the way we go racing together."

The Italian also praised both of his drivers for keeping it clear so far. "So far I just can only be very grateful to Lando and Oscar, who have approached this internal competition with a great sense of responsibility and pretty much sticking to the letter to what are our racing principles and approach."

Piastri and Norris asked to say 'anything'

Reflecting once again on Piastri's 'cheeky' comment over the team radio, Stella added that they want both drivers to express their thoughts and feelings.

"We always tell our drivers, like, don't leave anything in the back of your mind. Anything, throw it out. Say what you think. In this case, I think Oscar's comment was to highlight a situation that we didn't discuss before. In itself, it's not anything too controversial, but we sort of did not discuss that before and we don't want to surprise our drivers with situation that we didn't discuss before."

He concluded: "So a little bit to take on for the team rather than for the drivers. We have to do some more homework and be ready even more for the coming races, which surely will be interesting."