Yesterday at 09:15
Lando Norris has been urged to adopt a ruthless approach with Oscar
Piastri after falling adrift of his McLaren team-mate in their F1
championship battle. With nine races remaining, Norris now finds
himself 34 points adrift of Piastri after incurring a chassis
failure with seven laps remaining of Sunday's Dutch Grand Prix,
forcing him into retirement when on course for a guaranteed second
position behind the race-winning Australian. It was a brutal blow
to Norris' title hopes, and he now finds himself in a difficult
position of playing catch-up against a driver who has been almost
faultless this season, and unable to rely on a rival getting into
the mix given McLaren's dominance this season. Jacques Villeneuve,
the 1997 champion, feels Norris now has no alternative but to adopt
a cut-throat attitude in his scrap with Piastri. "If you're Lando,
he's like the underdog, a hunter, and that's always the position I
preferred as well, because it makes you almost angry, aggressive,"
said Villeneuve, speaking on The F1 Show . "You've got to go for
it. It's fun, it's exciting. It can be frustrating, obviously, but
you've just got to go for it. And you've got to annihilate your
team-mate. You've got to show him who's the stronger, that you are
there to eat him alive. "You're coming from behind, and there's
nowhere to run, no place to hide. That's a little bit the approach
you have to have." Norris to follow Hamilton's example? Villeneuve
also feels Norris has to adopt sneaky tactics to disrupt Piastri,
or to at least drag others into their squabble to give him a
chance, citing Lewis Hamilton's strategy with Nico Rosberg in their
2016 title-decider in Abu Dhabi. Although Rosberg still came out on
top, Norris has nothing to lose. "In the race, you just have to
hope someone gets in the middle of the fight, that it's not a
one-two, but like a one-three, and you can catch more points,"
remarked Villeneuve. "So what do you do? You slow down a bit so
that someone can maybe get your team-mate if you're ahead. That
kind of stuff we've seen. Lewis against Nico in the last race, he
was driving slowly, hoping someone would get Nico. You have to
start playing those games." Reflecting on the situation from
Piastri's position, Villeneuve feels he can be a little more
cautious in his approach, even though the title is far from his
reach just yet. But given the points difference, and McLaren so
dominant, Norris would have to score five successive one-twos over
the next five races just to take the lead by a single point.
"Piestri, not much he can do," said Villeneuve. "He's not really in
a position to take a big risk. He might accept a P2 because going
for that P1 and risking a crash would give the championship to his
team-mate, so that's a difficult position he's in. "We've seen
[Max] Verstappen in that position, and that's him, though. He never
took the easy way out. He still went for the win and took the
risks, and it worked for him. "But that's the difficult decision
that Piastri will have to make. Does he take the risk and still go
for the win, which will increase his championship lead? Or does he
massage his lead and not take that risk?"
