Did McLaren jeopardize F1 title bid, team harmony in Monza?

“The way to win a championship is with the team. You’re going to need Oscar and you’re going to need the team”.

At some point during Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, or in the hours that followed, Lando Norris might well have reflected on those words. They had been spoken by race engineer Will Joseph while pleading with Norris to hand the lead and, ultimately, victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix back to teammate Oscar Piastri in the race before Formula One’s summer break.

It’s a quote that has not aged all that well for McLaren. On lap one of Sunday’s race at Monza, Norris had to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting Piastri as the Australian made a brilliant overtake at the Roggia chicane to snatch the lead. At the other end of the grand prix, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc just out of reach and nearing a popular victory at the team’s home race, McLaren then opted against asking Piastri to let Norris into second position for an extra three points in his pursuit of championship leader Max Verstappen.

Reflecting on what Joseph had told him in Budapest, Norris might have been forgiven for wondering just when that help from Piastri and the team would be forthcoming. Instead what Norris got was “Papaya rules” — the rules of engagement McLaren set out between its drivers for that first lap and the rest of the race, named after the manufacturer’s distinct colour of orange. Understanding precisely what those had been was still unclear when the paddock left Monza on Sunday night.

Some felt not clearly backing Norris had been an obvious blunder given the context of the championship fight and the fact that Red Bull’s season appears to be falling apart at the seams. It’s been a year of contrasts for McLaren: on the one hand, it has developed the MCL38 into the leading car on the grid and has won three races; on the other, it has squandered opportunities to win on a handful of other occasions. While McLaren still left Monza with both drivers on the podium, having gained on Red Bull in the constructors’ championship and on Verstappen in the drivers’, the approach to the race and the implementation of its rules of engagement appeared to lack conviction one way or the other.

How clear were the ‘Papaya rules’?

The first public mention of the phrase “Papaya rules” was during a media session on Saturday evening, when team boss Andrea Stella said that was the philosophy its drivers would follow. Both Stella and CEO Zak Brown said after the race that it was an instruction to race the other McLaren sensibly.

“Race them hard, race them clean, don’t touch,” is how Brown explained it on Sky Sports after the race. “Don’t do anything stupid” is how one McLaren team member explained it to ESPN on Sunday evening.

The suggestion from Stella after the race was that the drivers may have interpreted those sentiments slightly differently and that a review of the rules in the build-up to Baku’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix would have to include more specific wording. The team has not ruled out implementing team orders from Baku onward, given how Monza played out.

It’s easy to see where there may have been some misinterpretations. Piastri stuck rigidly to the “race hard” approach. Norris, in the lead car, was hampered by a poor exit out of the first chicane but still appeared to be taken by surprise that his teammate so ruthlessly passed around the outside of the next corner.

Piastri’s move at the Roggia chicane was sublime, as good of an example of hard wheel-to-wheel racing as you will see. Norris had left the door wide open on the outside, but that option was still fraught with risk for the 23-year-old in his sophomore season, especially given that he was passing his championship-contending teammate for the lead of the race through a narrow part of racetrack.

“It was an aggressive pass, so that’s a conversation we’ll have,” Brown later said. “It was nerve-racking on pit wall.”

Norris looked conflicted after the race. While he showed tendencies of his acutely self-critical nature at points, he also suggested it had been him, and not Piastri, who ensured “Papaya rules” did not lead to headlines of “Papaya fools in the gravel.” It was hard to disagree.

“I feel like he got way too close for comfort,” Norris said. “We both easily could have been out in that corner if I’d braked 1 metre later.”

Speaking to Brown on Sky Sports after the race, 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg — himself no stranger to close shaves and collisions with a teammate — appeared surprised McLaren had not come down harder on Piastri.

“First of all, Lando almost spun,” Rosberg said of Piastri’s overtake and the way Norris had to ensure there was no contact. “It won’t get closer than that. And then you allowed Leclerc to come through … it could have cost you the win, maybe.”

McLaren insisted after the race it would have struggled to replicate the one-stop strategy Ferrari so perfectly executed, and it’s true Leclerc was managing the lead with pace in hand at the end. However, even if the Ferrari did come alive in front of the tifosi in such an unexpected fashion, McLaren could have far better managed the race and protected the lead had they finished the first lap one-two rather than being either side of a red car.

There was another unanswered question on Sunday evening, and one that likely will shape the conversations McLaren have about the incident ahead of the race in Baku. Would Norris have let the move happen if the car behind had not been the other McLaren? The British driver’s understanding of the guidelines laid out as “Papaya rules” may have meant that kind of move from Piastri behind was unthinkable.

“Obviously if I could rewind I would do stuff slightly differently,” Norris admitted after the race with the benefit of hindsight.

There’s a wider point to be made about Norris there, too.

Regardless of what he thought McLaren’s rules of engagement were, he still knew the mind of a racing driver and he left a big gap for a talented opponent to overtake him. Beyond the noise around McLaren’s handling of the race, there were plenty of people suggesting it was a moment Norris can’t afford to repeat if he wants to be champion in 2024 or beyond. It’s not a stretch to say Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton would have made Piastri’s life a lot more difficult on the outside, whether he was driving the same-coloured car of a different one. If there is any takeaway for Norris beyond how his team managed the race, it’s that he needs to be more ruthless in his pursuit of this championship.

The Piastri conundrum

It is easy to armchair quarterback the situation, but there’s an obvious reason McLaren was reluctant to decisively enforce something akin to team orders from the get-go. While some teams, like Red Bull with Verstappen and Sergio Pérez, have a clear hierarchy in terms of form and talent, the situation at McLaren is not so clear. Norris is the more consistent of the two drivers at the moment, but both he and Piastri have the makings of future world champions, and Brown is determined to keep his lineup long term.

Telling one driver that he is playing second fiddle to his teammate with nine races left in the season is a morale-crushing thing to do. It’s the kind of decision that can turn the head of a driver and make him start considering whether he might get fairer treatment elsewhere.

It’s even more complicated when considering that Piastri only has a solitary grand prix win to his name and is suddenly piloting a car that should be in with a shot at victory every weekend from now until the end of the year. Speaking to sources within McLaren throughout the weekend, it is clear the team does not want to simply make Piastri the rear-gunner for Norris. It is also very clear Piastri’s view on that: When ESPN asked both McLaren drivers about the prospect of team orders in the news conference that followed qualifying, the question was met with an icy stare from Piastri.

When asked on Sunday evening if McLaren had thought about asking Piastri to give Norris second position in the closing laps, Stella said: “We did not consider that. We considered other ways during the race to make sure Lando had his own opportunities, but we didn’t consider the swap, even because we were still willing to put as much pressure as possible on Leclerc [and] eventually induce him to have a problem with the front left like a lockup in one of the chicanes.

“I think without Leclerc, Lando and Oscar would have been close enough that we could have played with some other variables. That does not necessarily mean that now we swap positions, because I don’t think … at least this wasn’t part of our agreement, it looks a little brutal if you ask a driver who is going to win a race he gained on track that you have to swap positions.”

There is a fascinating added element to that side of the equation, too.

Piastri’s manager and fellow Australian Mark Webber knows a thing or two about how brutal situations concerning teammates can be from his time alongside Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull. Webber still carries a lot of frustrations from that era and has spoken about how he wishes he had put his foot down sooner. Piastri has in his corner as loud of an advocate as you will find for resisting team orders.

What’s next?

McLaren should know better than most teams how fleeting moments of success can be. Before 2024, it had just one win since Jenson Button’s triumph at the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix. It has watched Red Bull go from an all-conquering juggernaut to a team with a car that looks worse every week. There is no guarantee the front-row lockouts of Zandvoort and Monza continue into the tail end of the season, especially with the gains teams appear to be making this year. That’s why it was so surprising to see McLaren resist the obvious urge to manage the race between its two drivers.

The near-miss of Monza appeared to be a bit of a wake-up call that future situations will need to be handled better. Stella, who has been a key part in McLaren’s emergence as a competitive force this year, will have to get his hands around the situation. You can sympathise with him in that regard; he was Fernando Alonso‘s race engineer when Felipe Massa was told “Fernando is faster than you” at the 2010 German Grand Prix, one of the most infamous team orders calls of modern times. He knows better than most how difficult to manage those moments can become internally.

“Even with Ferrari when there was a successful driver, the successful driver was successful because he was gaining the success on track,” Stella said. “Even in the cases in which there was a blatant support to one of the drivers, in fact I am not sure that wasn’t something that actually backfired, so that’s why I think this thing needs to be approached with common sense, needs to be approached with racing values and needs to be approached with the support of both drivers. Because if one of your two drivers doesn’t accept that there is certain way to go racing then we are not going to succeed.”

Stella also explained what McLaren can expect between Monza and Baku in terms of its review of the situation.

“Already in our conversation before the race here we acknowledged that Lando is in the best position from a drivers’ championship point of view,” he said. “We have conversations with Oscar, we have conversations with Lando and we have conversations together, and that defines our rules of engagement. We need to take a look at the first lap, but it has to be done in a way that is competent, detailed, specific, takes into account the videos, what was the drivers’ expectations and then see what we can learn from this situation to adjust future situations, save the fact that we do want to give it a go at the championship with Lando.”

McLaren’s “Papaya rules” and discussions about team orders generally will dominate the build-up to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sept. 15.