Piastri officially puts an end to McLaren ‘sabotage’ talk

Oscar Piastri has made it clear that there was no “sabotage” at all from his McLaren team during the 2025 season.

But, Piastri did admit that McLaren made things harder for itself at times than it needed to. Therefore, the team’s much-debated ‘papaya rules’ are to be streamlined in time for the F1 2026 campaign.

Oscar Piastri: No McLaren 2025 title ‘sabotage’

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Piastri at one stage was the clear favourite to become World Champion in F1 2025. But, a 34-point lead, fizzled out into a third-place finish in the standings. McLaren teammate Lando Norris instead became World Champion for the first time.

McLaren remained committed to providing a level playing field for both of its drivers, which actually at times sparked unfounded claims that the team was favouring Norris in the title battle.

Monza was a clear flashpoint, as McLaren asked Piastri to yield to Norris, who had been ahead on track but pitted second, with a slow stop bringing him back out behind Piastri.

The Piastri sabotage talk even made its way into Australian politics. Piastri was asked by 7News whether he had seen this. A politician in parliament having posed the question: “McLaren is biased against Oscar Piastri and costing him the World Championship.”

“Yeah, I saw, and I think, for me, the takeaway from that was just how closely everyone was supporting it, more than than anything else,” Piastri said.

“There were certainly no bad intentions last year.

“I think as a team, we know that there’s things that we could have done a better job of, things we could have done differently, and I know that as well.

“But, at no point were there any bad intentions, or certainly no sabotage, like I’ve seen around a few times.

“But that’s part of racing. Some things go as you want, some things don’t. We’ve worked very hard on trying to tidy up some of the things we didn’t get right last year. And I’m confident that we can do a better job in 2026.”

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McLaren’s approach to how it managed the title battle between its drivers often fell under the ‘papaya rules’ terms.

Those remain for F1 2026, but as Piastri mentions, some fine-tuning is required.

“I think it is just streamlining it, really,” said Piastri of papaya rules going forward.

“I think last year we got ourselves into some scenarios we didn’t need to necessarily, and added a lot more stress to certain things than was probably necessary.

“I think we’ve all, in the off-season, taken some time to look back on that and realise that there’s things we need to do differently.

“And again, I think all of those scenarios we found ourselves in came from good intentions, but they required a lot of effort at certain points. So I think we’ve got some good ideas on how we’re going to streamline it.

“I think the biggest message is we want to go racing as fairly as we can, whilst, trying to get the most points for the team.

“And again, it’s a bit different if you’re fighting for first and second in the World Championship or a little bit further back, so we’ll see what our competitiveness is like, but I think we’ve got a good plan on how we can make things a little bit easier for ourselves.”

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