Bernie Ecclestone: 'McLaren have picked preferred Lando Norris vs Oscar Piastri winner'

Bernie Ecclestone believes McLaren would prefer to see Lando Norris become Formula 1 champion this season. That claim from the sport's former supremo comes after the team caused a stir at the Italian Grand Prix with a team order from which the Brit benefitted.

Norris is locked in a title duel with team-mate Oscar Piastri. Ahead of next weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the Australian driver leads the championship by 31 points with eight rounds, including three sprint races, still to go.

But that gap would have been six points bigger, had McLaren not intervened late in the Monza race. Norris was ahead of Piastri for the whole race but dropped behind his team-mate because of a slow pit stop, only for the team to order the Aussie to move aside.

Team principal Andrea Stella insisted afterwards that it was the fair thing to do, and Piastri also said he had no complaints. The team defended the decision by pointing out that Norris had given up pit stop priority to help his team-mate and that is what led to the slow pit stop.

But McLaren have faced criticism from some fans and pundits for getting involved in the title race because bad luck befell one of their drivers. And Ecclestone is among those who disagrees with Stella's claim that it was the fair thing to do.

The former F1 chief has even gone as far as to suggest the team has shown a preference for Norris to become champion. "They keep talking about fairness, but is it fair for Piastri to be penalised for a team mistake? No," the 94-year-old told Swiss outlet Blick.

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"You are starting to get the feeling that McLaren prefers a World champion named Lando Norris. Mistakes like missed pit stops, engine failures, and suspension failures may have become less common, but they are part of the sport."

Commenting on the situation, former Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg came to the conclusion that there was "no right or wrong" way for the team to handle it. In his view, Norris had been the better performer over the course of the weekend and "deserved" to narrow the gap to his championship rival.

The 2016 champion, who was working at Monza as a pundit for Sky Sports, said: "I was happy they did that because with the hat that I have on, I want a super exciting Formula 1 championship until the very end. So I was happy that in that case, Lando had the opportunity to get the deserved points since he personally did a better job than Oscar over the Monza weekend.

"So I thought it was good that they did that. But it is impossible – there is no right or wrong. It looked fair from the outside, of course, because it is not fair to Lando. He did everything amazingly, and then the team messes up his pit stop."