Palmer: McLaren drivers will start elbowing soon

      Jolyon Palmer, a former Formula 1 driver, taking part in the F1 Nation podcast on the official website of the championship, shared his forecasts for the situation at McLaren: in his opinion, it will inevitably become more tense. 

      Jolyon Palmer: "I think that the McLaren drivers will lead the fight for the title – after Barcelona, we can already talk about this more or less confidently. Remembering the Spanish Grand Prix, two points can be highlighted: firstly, everyone was waiting for this race, since the tightening of the FIA policy on flexible wings was timed to coincide with the 9th stage of the season. 

      Before the start of the season, it was rumored that the teams would actually have to prepare two cars: one for the first eight stages, and the second for all the others starting from the 9th. However, to be honest, we didn't notice almost any difference in the balance of power. 

      Of course, all this is only to the advantage of McLaren, because this team is still in the lead in the championship, its drivers occupy the first two lines of the personal standings. At the same time, Max Verstappen continues to lose points – in general, in my opinion, it's quite interesting to follow all this.…

      Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris still maintain quite friendly relations, they are still good teammates, but this cannot last long. I think one of them should become the champion this year, and little by little they will start hiding some information from each other, especially when it comes to qualifying, when you need to squeeze everything out of the car, to the last fraction of a second. And on Sundays, there will be more and more elbowing.

      On Saturday in Barcelona, we already saw the first signs that Lando was trying to use some tricks. They are both in contention for the title, neither has been world champion yet, and each strives to show that he is the leader at McLaren. And since Norris and Piastri are almost equal in their abilities, I do not expect a repeat of the history that once existed in Mercedes between Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

      McLaren drivers are almost at the same level, so they will fight for the title until the last stage of the season, and in this situation it is impossible to maintain friendly relations.… I suppose the psychological factor will also play a role. Oscar is in the lead now, he has made great efforts to get into this position, he has bounced back after the setback in Melbourne, and this has given him confidence in his abilities. 

      We practically do not see any external manifestations of this, but his inner state is as follows: he intends to destroy the opponent. In part, the situation is influenced by the fact that Lando is not quite comfortable driving a MCL39, and he has already mentioned this more than once. He likes to attack at the entrance to corners, and the McLaren car now, in my opinion, is characterized by excellent traction of the driving wheels at the exit of corners, and on Sundays we see how both drivers actively use this, including by increasing their advantage over the others.

      It seems that Oscar is the one who feels the car perfectly at the exit of the corners, and everything starts to come together for him, because he and his car are almost a single whole. He finds the right rhythm when cornering, and even if Lando manages to keep a higher speed at the entrance, Oscar just chooses the right trajectory and works the throttle very smoothly at the exit. 

      Not every lap of his driving is breathtaking, but he always achieves an advantage because he accelerates perfectly at the exit of corners and maintains high speed on the straights. It seems that this approach proved to be very effective for him. 

      But I think that Lando will also feel quite confident in Canada, including because they will use soft C6 tires, just like in Monaco. There are also a lot of slow turns on the Montreal circuit, despite the fact that this rubber works strangely, and I'm not even sure if it's faster than the usual C5 compound.

      In Monaco, Lando had the advantage, and last year in Canada he also had a chance to win, if not for the appearance of the safety car. In general, I think he will have a confident attitude in Montreal..."