McLaren scrap ‘papaya rules’ after ‘painful’ admission in Oscar Piastri talks

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris have both won two Grands Prix in F1 2024

Tackling the difficult subject of team orders in the wake of Monza, Andrea Stella says Oscar Piastri is willing to move over for Lando Norris even though it will be “painful”.

McLaren scored a bit of an own goal last time out in Monza when they baulked on issuing team orders in favour of Norris, allowing Piastri to take three points away from his team-mate.

It’s ‘painful’, but McLaren say Oscar Piastri will do it

It meant that instead of maximising a poor weekend for Max Verstappen, McLaren denied the Briton three points in the Drivers’ Championship where he sits 62 points behind the Red Bull driver.

It could’ve even been 52 had McLaren not ordered Norris to take P1 back to Piastri at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

However, now acknowledging that, with their gains and Red Bull’s slump, they have a genuine chance to win both titles, McLaren are going to back Norris 100 per cent.

Team boss Andrea Stella told BBC Sport that McLaren had the hard conversation with Piastri, who is 44 points behind Norris in the Drivers’ standings.

“The conversations have been very collaborative,” he said. “Even when I said to Oscar: ‘Would you be available to give up a victory?’ He said: ‘It’s painful, but if it’s the right thing to do now, I will do it’.

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“Every driver is hard-wired to go for a victory. So I am always very impressed by the level of team spirit and maturity and collaboration that we found in this period.”

He, however, insists Norris ideally wants to win on merit, not because he was gifted a position by his team-mate.

“Lando wants to win because he deserved the victory on track,” Stella said.

“It’s OK to be occasionally supported by your team-mate, but you don’t want to use, systematically, ways of adjusting the race just for the sake of the points when your team-mate is scoring in a way that he deserves.

“This is not the way McLaren want to win, or the way Lando wants to win.

“If I ask Lando, he would say: ‘I am comfortable if in Abu Dhabi [end of the year] I miss a few points that I could have got with some actions, but if those actions were not right at the time, then, you know what? We keep strong as a team, the team is stable and cohesive, we will give it a go next year’.”

McLaren will re-evaluate ‘papaya rules’ manifesto

The McLaren team-mate tussle last time out in Monza, which saw Piastri snatch the lead off Norris through the second chicane, brought McLaren’s “papaya rules” to the forefront.

Stella says that rule is not that they can’t race each other, they must just do so with respect.

“The ‘papaya rules’ only have to do with racing with no risks, no contact between the two McLarens and respectfully,” he said. “That’s it.

“It’s just a quick way to remind our drivers, ‘Guys, don’t take too much risk in fighting each other’.”

“What we don’t want to see any more is a situation like in Monza in which we enter a chicane P1/P2 and we exit P1/P3,” he added. “Because that is a detriment to the team.

“The team interests comes first and these are the situations that above all we need to fix because eventually, as a matter of fact, the way we entered the race in Monza left the door open this situation.

“After Monza, three objectives: we need to make sure that anything that happens on track is not to the detriment of the team.

“Second objective, how do we win both championships, both drivers committed to help?

“But what we don’t want to do is win in a reckless way.

“Those are the three topics and they define the way we go racing in Baku. This will be updated after Baku.”

Zak Brown: Oscar is going to do everything he can to help

McLaren CEO Zak Brown confirmed this on NASCAR driver’s Dale Earnhardt JR’s podcast, saying: “We’re going to give it everything we’ve got.

“Oscar is going to do everything he can to help. You know, I’m fortunate, I got two number one drivers, they’re both awesome, but Lando is now in a position where, you know, he can mathematically see it, smell it. So we’re gonna work as a team to see what we can do to help Lando.

“We are going to do it a race at a time, you know, if two races we have closed the gap, we will keep working as a team. If in a couple of races Max has won and Lando got a DNF, then you know, we will go back to letting him go.”

McLaren will line up on the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday with the Constructors’ lead in their sights as they’re just eight points down on Red Bull.

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