McLaren papaya rules? Oscar Piastri reveals teams’ stance ahead of F1 2026

Oscar Piastri says McLaren could “tweak” its papaya rules ahead of the F1 2026 season to “make life a bit easier for ourselves” after a few controversial moments last season.

The McLaren drivers went head-to-head for the title last season, the McLaren MCL39 in a league of its own in the early half of the championship.

Could McLaren chanage its papaya regulations in F1 2026?

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It, however, wasn’t all smooth sailing.

Standing by its papaya rules, the internal guidelines aimed at ensuring clean and fair racing between their drivers, McLaren courted controversy at the Italian Grand Prix when Piastri was ordered to give second place to Lando Norris after a botched pit stop saw the Briton fall behind his teammate on track.

Norris later faced internal consequences for clattering into Piastri at the Singapore Grand Prix before those repercussions were dropped when Piastri collected Norris on the opening lap of the Sprint in Austin.

Several of McLaren’s calls, though, led to claims from Piastri fans that McLaren was favouring Norris in the championship fight, a stance firmly denied by the Woking team.

Norris went on to overturn Piastri’s lead in the Drivers’ standings to clinch his maiden title, while the Australian – who admitted Monza had an impact on his season – dropped to third, 13 points off the pace.

Lando Norris v Oscar Piastri: McLaren 2025 head-to-head scores

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The 24-year-old has revealed McLaren will discuss its papaya regulations before the beginning of the new season, and could even implement a few changes to it.

“It gets talked about a lot,” he told Channel 9.

“Behind the scenes it’s a much smaller discussion and a smaller deal than what it gets made out to be.

“But we’ve got our ways of going racing and it’s constantly evolving. We’ll do a review and we already have reviewed.

“Do we want to do things exactly the same? Do we want to change things a bit?

“We’ll get a handle on that fully before we go racing again.

“For me, the intentions were always in the right place and we’ll do some tweaking if we feel we need it, to try and make life a bit easier for ourselves.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella also confirmed to Sky Sports News that McLaren will have the conversations with an eye to reaffirming its policy of fairness for both drivers.

“I can certainly say that like with anything else that we approach at McLaren, we go through a thorough process of review, such that we can see where the opportunities are to improve,” he said.

“And this was the same for what we call the racing principles and the way we go racing and internal competition.

“We got quite a lot of feedback already during the season last year. We had conversations after the season. And we are having conversations pretty much as we speak now.

“All of these has led us to reaffirm fundamentally that the concepts of fairness, integrity, equal opportunities, sportsmanship, they are all fundamental for the team, for Lando and for Oscar. They are reaffirmed, they are confirmed and consolidated if anything.

“At the same time, we all acknowledge that the volume of work required for instance for the team and to some extent even for the drivers related to internal competition was important.

“Therefore, any attempt we can make to make this going racing together just simpler, to some extent, will be welcome.”

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