McLaren didn’t have the pace to rival Mercedes in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, but Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri ensured the papaya team still had its own late-race drama to savour at Monza.
With the chequered flag approaching, the two McLaren drivers found themselves locked in a tense fight for fourth place, their battle becoming increasingly feisty as Norris hunted down his team-mate.
There was even a moment when the reigning World Champion was forced onto the grass, prompting an immediate complaint over the radio.
Yet once the dust settled, neither driver was crying foul. Quite the opposite: both Norris and Piastri viewed their wheel-to-wheel encounter as hard but fair racing.
Norris gets a little too close for comfort
Norris had spent much of the race recovering from a disappointing P8 starting position, having entered the weekend chasing a third consecutive victory after wins at the Hungarian and Dutch Grands Prix.
Piastri, meanwhile, had started only two places ahead in sixth after his three-place grid penalty for impeding Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson during qualifying.
The Australian spent much of the race embroiled in a battle with Lewis Hamilton before eventually finding himself under pressure from his rapidly advancing team-mate.
As the McLarens closed in on the final laps, Norris saw an opportunity to attack. But when Piastri appeared to edge across while the pair raced towards the second chicane, Norris was forced onto the grass at high speed.
His immediate radio reaction suggested he was far from impressed. After the race, however, Norris played down the incident, admitting that the intensity of fighting from inside the cockpit can distort perceptions of what is happening around the car.
“No, it was okay," said Norris when reflecting on the incident on the exit of Curva Grande and heading into the second chicane.
The McLaren driver explained that the perspective from behind the wheel can make even a legitimate defensive move feel considerably more dangerous, particularly when the car is flirting with the limits of the circuit.
“I still need to review things, but I think it's just a perception of when you're in the car, when someone's kind of opening the gap a bit and then kind of go straight, you get that perception when you're going at 200mph. So that's all,” he said.
“But I think what he did was fair. It's just when you're in the moment and you're half on the grass, you realise how quickly things can end pretty badly – just in the heat of the moment. But from that side it was fine, and was a good battle. So yeah, a good result from a tough race.”
Norris eventually got the better of the scrap, completing his recovery from eighth by taking fourth place from Piastri on the final lap at the Ascari Chicane.
Piastri welcomes the McLaren showdown
For Piastri, the closing-stage fight was less about confrontation and more about the strategic chess match that comes with battling an equally matched team-mate.
Having lost ground to Verstappen after the Red Bull driver emerged on fresh tyres, Piastri was unable to shake off Norris, leaving McLaren with an unusually intense intra-team battle for the final podium-adjacent positions.
The Australian acknowledged the pressure but saw no reason to question Norris's approach or his own defence. Instead, he described the contest as exactly the kind of racing McLaren should want between its drivers.
"It was a tough battle for sure. I think we both seemed pretty even, especially in the last few laps, so it was definitely challenging to know when to use your battery, when not to," he said.
Read also:
Team Talk: A memorable Sunday at Monza
Piastri ultimately had to settle for fifth, but there was no bitterness in his assessment of the fight. With Mercedes comfortably establishing a 1-2 and Verstappen finishing ahead of the McLarens, he felt fourth and fifth represented the maximum available to the team.
“I think that we saw a good battle. From my point of view, I thought it was good racing – exciting, that's for sure, and ultimately I think that was the best result we could have got as a team, so I'm pretty happy with it,” he concluded.
The result was all the more impressive given McLaren's difficulty matching the straight-line performance of Mercedes despite both teams running the same power unit. The Woking squad also lost the crucial tow from the Mercedes cars and Verstappen during the middle portion of the race, leaving Norris and Piastri exposed.
For Norris, that slipstream was vital at a circuit where the margins between gaining and losing ground were razor-thin.
“We needed someone to kind of pull us along, and then we could compete, because then we're more on a level playing field compared to them," said the Briton.
"I think on a day like today, it was almost a good thing to not be ahead for too often, because generally you would always go backwards.
“But then when you were behind, you always felt like you could go forwards. So it was always a tough position to be in. Sometimes you just had to be a little bit patient, and kind of for me, that worked on the final two laps. I think P4 was the best we could achieve, and P4 and P5 for us as a team is also good.”
So while the McLaren garage may have experienced a few tense moments as its drivers went toe-to-toe at Monza, there was no lingering bitterness afterwards.
Norris got the position, Piastri got the respect, and McLaren walked away with a double top-five finish.
In a race where Mercedes demonstrated the advantage of having clean air and Verstappen showed the potency of fresh rubber, the papaya pairing instead supplied its own dose of late-race fireworks — without crossing the line.
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