Why McLaren won’t loosen the reins on Norris and Piastri battle even after team title

Andrea Stella has said McLaren won’t take a different approach to team orders even after the Constructors’ Championship is secured.

McLaren intervened to swap the positions of its two drivers in the closing stages of the Italian Grand Prix, with Oscar Piastri obeying the order to concede position to his teammate and main title rival Lando Norris.

Andrea Stella: McLaren ‘not surprised’ by the noise

McLaren has done its utmost to ensure complete fairness between its two drivers throughout this year’s championship, with the teammates realistically the only potential challengers for the title as Max Verstappen’s Red Bull hasn’t had the consistent performance needed to sustain a title tilt.

Norris and Piastri had circulated in second and third places, respectively, at Monza as Verstappen came out on top at the Italian Grand Prix. But McLaren’s pitstops for its two drivers resulted in an inadvertent position swap, as Piastri was brought in first and, coupled with a slow stop for Norris, it resulted in the Australian coming out ahead.

Due to the position change coming about by McLaren‘s slow stop for Norris, the request was made of Piastri to relinquish position. While he initially questioned it, saying that “I thought we said slow stops are a part of racing”, he obeyed the team to cede position, directly affecting his own position in the Drivers’ Championship.

Much has been made by McLaren about its efforts to remain fair to both drivers throughout their respective quests to become first-time World Champions with the team, an even-handed approach that has largely been successful so far, although incidents such as Monza raise the question about where the lines of fairness and artificial stage management become blurred.

Speaking about the topic of the noise about McLaren’s handling of the situation since Monza, team boss Andrea Stella said he hadn’t been surprised by the fact it has been a dominant topic for fans and media ever since Piastri relinquished his position to Norris.

“I think the noise around the racing situation is natural,” he said.

“Formula 1 is a very popular sport; what’s important for us is that comments are respectful. When they are respectful, we welcome, we listen, we take them into account, even if, ultimately, what counts for us is not the external noise, but what we make of it internally, and how we set ourselves to keep going racing.

“Racing situations are definitely susceptible to different interpretations, so we are comfortable with the noise, with the comments. We welcome the comments.

“From the pitwall, we execute what we agree with our drivers, which ultimately becomes our racing principles and approach.

“In that situation, like I explained after the race, and like I think Lando and Oscar have explained yesterday, because we sequenced the two cars in a certain way of the pitstop, going with the car behind [first], then we required a swap, because this compounded with the slow stop, and led to a swap [of positions].”

Referring back to Hungary 2024, when Norris was instructed to move aside for Piastri’s first win in similar circumstances, Stella said, “But this situation that we had with the sequence in terms of pitstop is the same as Hungary [2024], and we acted consistently with the situation we had in Hungary.”

McLaren’s position of enforcing fairness is understandable to a certain extent, as two drivers battling against each other could, in theory, damage a team’s position in the Constructors’ Championship.

However, McLaren is rapidly closing in on a successful defence of its 2024 Constructors’ Championship victory, and could theoretically manage it this weekend if certain circumstances play out.

Once the team’s success is guaranteed, will McLaren take a more hands-off approach to managing its drivers and allow them greater freedom to fight for the title on their own terms, even if that means a less harmonious ending to the season?

“No, the approach to the Drivers’ Championship will not change. This is not dependent on the Constructors’,” Stella firmly said.

“The way we go racing is dependent on the racing principles, on the value that we embody as McLaren Racing, and also is a reflection of the fact that we want to protect the unity of the team, which is a foundational condition for the future.”

In Stella’s eyes, the way McLaren handled the Monza situation merely reaffirmed that its approach to racing is the correct one for its current team dynamic.

“Like after every race weekend, we review how we operate, the decisions we make, like the driving, and so on,” he said.

“We did the same after Monza, and we could confirm that the way we operated is what we intended, and is what we can confirm for the future.

“So while we remain open and attentive to anything that happens, I think that situation gave us a possibility to confirm our approach.”

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What do Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri think?

Norris said he hasn’t been surprised by the negative reaction McLaren’s actions triggered, saying that the team is “trying to do a good thing” and that, whether people agree with that or not, it’s “not our problem”.

He dismissed the idea that he and Piastri aren’t allowed to race each other wheel-to-wheel, and that only exceptional circumstances will affect that.

“For 99 per cent of things, of course,” Norris said, when asked about being free to race for the rest of this title push.

“How things look, because of something that happened [at Monza], gives everyone a very different opinion or oversight on things.

“But if you make it as simple, and it’s kind of how we did it, as happened in Hungary last year, which was a very similar thing, that the driver in the lead has priority in a pit-stop sequence, and that’s exactly what we were entering [at Monza], then things don’t change.

“But the fact is, as soon as we re-established the positions, Oscar could race me freely. He still had the advantage of starting on my gearbox and trying to race me, so he still gained overall.

“But otherwise, we’ve been free to race every time.

“It’s just that in one lap of a pit sequence, the lead driver always has priority. That’s how it’s always been, and how it will continue to be. Otherwise, like we said, we’re free to race.”

As for Piastri, who didn’t benefit from the situation, he said he would expect the exact same outcome if the same scenario were to arise again between the two McLaren drivers, and he doesn’t expect any changes going forward simply due to the Constructors’ Championship situation.

“I think we’ve again had a lot of discussions about how we want to go racing,” he said.

“A lot of that is to stay for us because, ultimately, if we give out that information, then we become very easy targets to pick off, because everyone knows what we’re going to do.

“So that’s all very aligned with all of us, but it stays in-house.”

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