Lando Norris has insisted he wants to win the 2024 Formula 1 world championship on merit even after his team, McLaren, made a U-turn on their policy around team orders, Afrosport reports.
Team principal, Andrea Stella, ahead of this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, confirmed they will favour Norris, who is 62 points behind Max Verstappen in the drivers’ standings, in certain scenarios, with eight races left.
The British driver needs to outscore Verstappen by an average of eight points per race to take the title but he prefers to have on his own terms and not with the help of teammate Oscar Piastri.
“If a driver is doing better than me and performing, I need to do a better job, so I wouldn’t want to take that away from someone,” Norris said.
“I also don’t want to be given a championship. Yes, it would be great to have a championship, and in the short term you feel amazing, but I don’t think you’d be proud of that in the long run.
“That’s not something I want, that’s not how I want to win a championship. I want to win it by fighting against Max, by beating Max, beating my competitors, and proving that I’m the best on track. And that’s how I want to win.”
Meanwhile, Piastri believes he will not have to move over for Norris at all the remaining races in 2024 but stated that more discussions need to be held within the team.
“It still needs some more discussion,” he said. “I think the main point is that it’s not purely going to be me pulling over for Lando every single race because that’s how none of us, including Lando, want to go racing.
“Trying to go through all the scenarios is impossible and of course, we don’t want to discuss that publicly but I think the main one is if we feel that someone has done a much better job on a weekend, whatever way it is, we want that person to be rewarded.
“That’s where it becomes a little bit tricky still. We need to continue discussing that. It’s not simply a blanket ‘I am going to be behind Lando in every single race in every decision ever taken from here on out’ because I still have things I want to achieve in the championship, trying to boost my standing in the tdrivers’ championship.
“As a team, we’re not winning the constructors’ so we need to make sure we win that. So it’s very important we maintain that kind of trust.”
McLaren sit just eight points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ standings.
