Jacques Villeneuve defends Lando Norris after crowd booing at races

F1 champion Lando Norris was booed at multiple races during the 2025 season, including the Mexico City Grand Prix and the Brazilian Grand Prix. Former F1 champion Jaques Villeneuve recently came out and explained how he was disappointed by the crowd booing the McLaren racer.

Oscar Piastri led the majority of the F1 season but lost form after a crash at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. On top of that, McLaren made some controversial decisions by applying the Papaya rules, including the position switch at the Italian Grand Prix after a slow stop for Lando Norris.

With reports and McLaren's Papaya rules seemingly portraying Norris as the favored racer, fans slammed the Briton after the pole position and win at the Mexican and Brazilian Grand Prix. Jacques Villeneuve recently featured on the High Performance podcast and discussed the 2025 F1 champion's season.

The host questioned what Villeneuve made of Lando Norris being booed, and the sentiment amongst the fans that McLaren favored the British over Oscar Piastri.

“That's a little bit ridiculous. When there was some booing in some races, it was embarrassing. You should never boo a driver that's clean, doesn't do anything dirty, on track is respectful, and on top of it, it's super fast. What's wrong with people? That was embarrassing,” said Villeneuve

Now, had it been that Piastri was second a lap faster than him, and somehow Lando was winning because a lot of things were happening, his car breaking down every time, then you could start thinking, okay, that's really not cool, that's not fair, but that wasn't the case,” he added

Lando Norris just needed to secure the podium in Abu Dhabi to claim his first title, and he accomplished the same to become McLaren's most recent F1 champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.

Jacques Villeneuve believes McLaren did not favour Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri in the 2025 championship battle

The Papaya rules were applied to make it a fair fight between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri as the duo competed for the Drivers' title. Sadly, the application of the same looked to put the Briton as the favoured racer when that was not the case. When Jacques Villeneuve was asked about when Oscar Piastri might be feeling that the team favored his teammate, he replied,

“He might feel like that. Some people might be talking and he's just saying, you see the team didn't help you, they went wrong against, but that's not the truth. It's a big team. They didn't make one car slower. There was no work done that way. Ultimately, they were wanting to be World Champion with either drivers.”

Lando Norris clawed back Oscar Piastri's 30+ point lead in the last quarter of the season, and despite a fast Max Verstappen charging in the second half of the season, was able to claim the title.