McLaren reveal contingency plan over tense Norris and Piastri incident

McLaren CEO Zak Brown has revealed the plan in place to try and deal with a tense incident that is set to take place between F1 team-mates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

Despite coming together at the Canadian Grand Prix earlier this year, Norris and Piastri's relationship remains good, and the pair are regularly seen smiling together and working towards the team collective despite being in the midst of a championship battle.

Even when Piastri has lost his cool - namely at the British Grand Prix - it has not been directed at Norris, and he congratulated his team-mate on that win despite his anger with race stewards who had handed him a controversial penalty.

But the fact is that with 10 races to go, both drivers are embroiled in a huge battle for the title, and Piastri currently leads British rival Norris by nine points heading into the summer break.

The autumn period is set to see their rivalry taken to a new level, with one driver experiencing the high of winning their maiden championship title, and the other set to be left ruing what might have been.

Now, Brown has said that there is a plan in place to try to help both drivers with whatever highs or lows they may be feeling come the end of the season.

"They both can smell the championship, and only one can win it, so I'm sure it'll be hard on the one that doesn't win the championship, assuming the other one does," the American told F1 media.

"We'll just sit down and actually have a conversation, and go 'right, one of you is going to win, and it's going to be the best day of your life, one of you is going to lose, and you're going to be [devastated], how do you want us to handle that, how do you want us to act?'

"We'll be very considerate about that approach, because that's the way we think, it comes back to thinking about our people."

Who will win the championship?

With a nine-point lead and six race wins compared to Norris' five, Piastri heads into the remaining 10 races as the slight favourite for the title.

However, Norris has had the experience of being in a championship battle during the closing stages of a season before, missing out to Max Verstappen in 2024 after several errors prevented him from seriously applying pressure to Verstappen's points lead.

Norris will hopefully feel better prepared for what's to come this time around, but Piastri's consistency across the season has been impressive, and he is the only driver to have scored points in every race so far.

There are still three more sprint race weekends left on the calendar too, which could prove to be crucial, with an added maximum of eight points available at those weekends, which is almost the gap between the McLaren duo at this stage of the season.

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