MELBOURNE, Australia -- McLaren believe Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri can coexist without problems as the team goes into the new season as favourites.
McLaren's driver pairing combined for six victories in 2024 as the team claimed its first constructors' championship of the millennium, and preseason testing appeared to confirm the British outfit has retained an advantage over its rivals ahead of Sunday's Australian Grand Prix.
Any class-leading team inevitably has to reckon with potentially messy internal dynamics -- McLaren struggled to manage it in 2024, with a sloppily executed team orders call in Hungary and then the maligned "papaya rules" in Italy.
But team boss Andrea Stella is confident Norris and Piastri, who goes into his home race with a new contract extension to 2028, can race fairly going into the new season as they did for the majority of last year.
"Definitely, like any other team, we have looked at what could have been done better and what we had done well last year, and actually we were quite proud of what we achieved, even in terms of internal competition," Stella said Thursday. "The respect, the relationship inside and outside the car, the head-to-head racing that happened at times between Lando and Oscar.
Nate Saunders and Laurence Edmondson predict who will win the 2025 F1 championship.
"They offered a couple of situations that we reviewed together, but offered a large majority of how we want to see our two drivers work together, race together, and this actually gave us a good reference as to how we want to continue for the future.
"That was a very, very collaborative, supportive process, and I feel that we are entering this season in a very strong position."
Norris, the bookmakers' favourite for a first drivers' title, said he welcomes the chance to race his teammate for wins.
"We're just free to race," Norris said. "We're happy to go against each other and compete. Of course, we have to know that we're going to be against each other a lot this season, and I hope we are.
"But our strength last season was helping one another and always giving each other a good amount of room, racing fair, those kind of things.
"And we need to maintain that. That's one of our biggest things as a team and our biggest goal."