The pressure in the Drivers’ Championship is mounting, and McLaren is under close scrutiny for allegedly favoring Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri. As the 2025 title battle between Norris and Piastri reaches its peak, voices from the paddock are adding fuel to the fire. Johnny Herbert believes that McLaren itself has fed the narrative suggesting the team prioritizes the British driver at the expense of the Australian, and now the situation requires corrective action.
The 2025 season began with McLaren clearly outperforming its rivals, making it obvious that the world championship fight would be an internal affair. Norris initially led the championship before ceding the position to Piastri in Jeddah.
The Melbourne-born Piastri held the lead for six months, but now it is Norris who returns as championship leader in Brazil, following a series of incidents that saw Oscar Piastri lose the 34-point advantage he had built after Zandvoort.
The subtle tensions between teammates began with Norris’ DNF in the Netherlands. At Monza, the team corrected a strategic error by having Oscar Piastri return a position to his teammate. In Singapore, Norris nudged Piastri, who then requested the position back, but the team refused.
McLaren did confirm that there would be consequences for Norris during the Austin weekend, but his mistake in the Sprint Race and the resulting double DNF erased everything, returning the situation to parity.
Johnny Herbert shared his perspective on McLaren’s tangled situation. “McLaren felt guilty about the technical DNF in the Netherlands,” he said in an interview with Adventure Gamers. “It was only for that reason that the team issued the order at Monza to return the position to Lando after the pit lane error.”
The former driver also recalled Toto Wolff’s past remarks, who had predicted that the so-called “Papaya rules” would eventually backfire on McLaren. “At some point, if you want to fight for the championship, you have to make decisions. But there should never be a choice between your own drivers when the world title is at stake.”
“McLaren itself has created the narrative that Norris is the team’s favorite, making decisions that favored him throughout the season. Now it’s up to McLaren to resolve this situation by no longer commenting on it or getting involved,” Herbert concluded.
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