F1 | Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris: Can Red Bull exploit the brewing storm at McLaren?. Christian Horner believes that Piastri and Norris could act selfishly in their pursuit of a first title.

At the moment, McLaren is dominating the 2025 Formula 1 season. The Woking team is firmly leading the Constructors’ Championship and holds first and second place in the Drivers’ standings. Despite this, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have yet to clash directly on track—but according to Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner, when it happens, it will be disastrous for the team.

Horner commented on the internal McLaren battle for second place at the end of the Imola GP. After losing the lead at the start to Max Verstappen, Piastri found himself in P2, just ahead of Lando Norris.

The situation flipped as differing strategies, along with both a Virtual Safety Car and a full Safety Car, ended up helping the Briton at the expense of the Australian. Driver #4 was thus able to complete the final laps with much fresher tyres than his teammate ahead.

However, McLaren allowed the two drivers to race rather than instructing Oscar Piastri to move aside. That decision once again allowed Max Verstappen to disappear into the distance. In the end, Norris pulled off a clean overtake on his teammate.

Looking back on the episode, Christian Horner praised the two drivers for avoiding contact. “Oscar had obviously pushed hard early on and you could see a bit of graining forming on the front-right,” Horner said.

“So then there was the indecision on whether to go for a one-stop or two-stop strategy. They chose the two-stop, but that took him out of contention due to the length of the pit lane. That got him into a lot of trouble with traffic. And that allowed Max to just keep going. And with Lando behind in clean air, we were able to manage the gap quite easily,” he added.

Horner went on to point out how the VSC and Safety Car neutralized Oscar Piastri’s strategy while favoring Norris. Then he let slip an interesting comment.

“At a certain point, self-interest will always prevail over team interest. That’s the dilemma. So, they did well not to make contact. It was commendable that they were allowed to race, but you could see they came very close.”

There hasn’t been a direct clash between the two “papayas” yet, but if things heat up as the season progresses, could Horner be right? And if so, would Red Bull be able to exploit the chaos within McLaren?