Lando Norris has expressed he “doesn’t want to be given a championship” as he ruled out McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri being made to relinquish Formula 1 wins.
McLaren has revealed that Norris’ title aspirations will now be prioritised over the remaining eight rounds as he aims to close down a 62-point gap to Max Verstappen.
The Woking-based squad had been reluctant to impose team orders earlier in the campaign, which contributed to Piastri’s bold opening-lap move on Norris at Monza.
However, McLaren’s stance has changed amid that overtake costing the team a win and Red Bull’s worsening troubles making Norris’ prospects appear more realistic.
But Norris has denied that McLaren’s increased support towards his ambitions will ensure that Piastri will be forced to give up victories should the pair be running 1-2.
When asked whether he was anticipating Piastri, who is 44 points back, to slow down to hand him the lead in upcoming races, Norris told Autosport: “No.
“In general, probably for lower positions, but if he’s fought for a win and he’s deserving of a win, then he deserves to win.”
Norris is adamant that he harbours desires to overcome the considerable margin to claim a maiden F1 title on merit rather than be reliant on others to gift him points.
Pressed on how he would take it should he come up less than double-digit points short, Norris replied: “I’m sure it will hurt, but I’m also here to race.
“And 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.
“I also don’t want to be given a championship. Yes, it would be great to have a championship, and on 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.”
The Briton has also explained that McLaren has refined its rules of engagement to ensure it avoids a repeat of the incident that demoted him to third place at Monza.
“I think there will be certain times when it’s just not smart to battle, but if you go into a lap one and that’s on your mind, that’s the wrong approach,” he elucidated.
“I think you both have to go into lap one with the right approach, which is to attack it, to try and go forward.
“As soon as soon as you start thinking about other things that’s normally when it starts to go wrong.
“Monza was a slightly different case. We’ve looked back at that and we’ve resolved that.
“The main thing is we came out of Turn 4 in first and third, and we had the biggest gap in the world going into the corner.
“It was not ideal in my world, but also for us as a team, that’s not how we should have gone racing there.
“So, I think clearer instructions of how we can race each other and how much we can risk with one another.”
