McLaren to ‘f*** the papaya rules’ and impose team orders on Oscar Piastri
Oscar Piastri overtook Lando Norris for the lead at Monza on the opening lap.
Guenther Steiner has told McLaren to “f**k the papaya rules” and impose team orders on Oscar Piastri because how often does a team have the chance to win both championship titles?
McLaren are in the thick of the 2024 title fights with the Woking team on the verge of taking the lead off Red Bull in the Constructors’ Championship, having closed the gap to eight points, and they’re also in with a shout in the Drivers’.
Guenther Steiner tells Zak Brown and McLaren to ‘f**k the papaya rule’
Lando Norris is second in the standings, 62 points behind Max Verstappen, with Piastri also in the running, at least mathematically, as he’s 106 adrift with 238 points still in play in eight Grands Prix and three Sprints.
Norris, though, is clearly McLaren’s best bet.
And yet last time out at the Italian Grand Prix the team did not impose team orders in favour of the Briton, allowing Piastri to take three points away from him, while back in Hungary they even ordered Norris to move over for his team-mate as it was Piastri who had been leading before McLaren’s strategy favour Norris.
That’s 10 points extra that Norris could have scored.
But put to Steiner that McLaren are damned in the court of public opinion if they impose team orders, the former F1 team boss told the Red Flags podcast: “No, not everybody [objects]. I wouldn’t say that. I go back to my principle, how many times in your lifetime have you got the chance to win a World Championship? Not many.
“Now they got the chance, and they cannot decide who is number one, who is number two, who is overtaking whom. No, I stick to that one.
“We need to tell Zak, ‘f*** the papaya rule, go and win the championship’.”
More on McLaren’s papaya rules
‘Papaya rules’ explained: What are McLaren instructing their drivers with new phrase?
McLaren data shows why ‘papaya rules’ need to change – and very soon
Guenther Steiner no wiser as to what the ‘bloody papaya rule’ is
Steiner revealed he spoke with McLaren CEO Zak Brown about the team’s ‘papaya rules’ but is no more clear than he was before the conversation about what exactly it entails.
In fact, the only thing he is certain of is that McLaren should drop it, impose team orders and win the championship double.
“They’ve got a rule, the ‘papaya rule’, as you well know,” he said. “So I asked Zak Brown what is the papaya rule?
“It’s the rule how we do this. All right, I knew as much before as after asking him, so I still don’t know what this bloody papaya rule is.
“It’s papaya so whatever papaya is, it’s the rule. But nobody knows what it is.
“Because the papaya rule doesn’t seem to be working, or maybe it works. I mean, we will have to wait until the end of the championship and if they win it or not.
“If they don’t win it, I think they have to change colour of the papaya rule – green, red, yellow, whatever. But not papaya.
“But anyway, back to the serious matters here. So, yes, I would make team orders. How many times in life can you win two championships in one season?
“I mean, I never had the chance, maybe I wasn’t good enough. Zak could say that he’s good enough. So in the moment when you’ve got the chance to win two championships, Constructors’ and Drivers’, I think you just need to say whatever it is, even if one guy is unhappy.
“I don’t know, do you have to pay money, do you have to make him promises for next year? Whatever, in my opinion, whatever you need to do you do because these moments they are not coming up often in Formula One.
“You know, it’s like, ‘oh, we have got the chance to hit the lottery, let’s not play it’ because you have got a good chance but somebody told me something, ‘oh, I’m not going to play it because I don’t really know…”
Told the excuse could be because it’s a long walk to the store, Steiner replied: “It’s a papaya long way because it is all to do with papaya.”
Read next: Oscar Piastri ‘took advantage of papaya rules’ against ‘vulnerable’ Norris claim made
