MONZA, Italy — As he closed in on victory in the closing laps of the Italian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen took a moment to chuckle at the running order of the orange cars trailing in the distance behind him.
When informed title contenders and teammates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri had swapped positions on instruction of their McLaren team, the Red Bull driver couldn’t help but laugh. “Ha! Just because he [Norris] had a slow stop?”
He can’t have been the only one watching Sunday’s to have reacted so incredulously as the situation played out behind him. In a title fight which has been as closely fought on track as this one, it was a remarkable moment. What he was referring to unfolded after McLaren’s pitstops late in the race. With Verstappen stopping earlier and giving up track position, the reigning constructors’ champions elected to stop as late as possible in a bid to capitalise on a Safety Car period at the end — standard F1 strategy practice when chasing a runaway leader.
What followed that was not standard practice. Perhaps unusually as the second car, Piastri pitted first and his stop went off without a hitch as McLaren’s crew sent him off in 1.9s. Norris’ a lap later fell short of that usual standard — he was stationary for four more seconds, a gap that was enough to mean he emerged behind his teammate and title rival. For a moment, it seemed like it would be another cruel blow to the driver whose championship hopes had taken a massive blow a week earlier through car failure at the Dutch Grand Prix.
But before anyone could really contemplate Piastri’s lead going from 34 to 37 points, McLaren intervened, asking the Australian to let his teammate back past in the interest of fairness, a word that was repeated a lot in the hours that followed.
Piastri obliged, albeit after momentary protest. “We said a slow pit-stop was part of racing,” he said. “I don’t really see what’s changed here. But if you want me to do it, I’ll do it.”
Piastri moved over and Norris reclaimed second position, meaning his title lead instead shrunk to 31 points — a six-point swing which might well have serious implication down the line in the title fight.
It’s unlikely the man running out in front would have reacted the same in front. His radio message was probably enough of an answer to the question of how he would have responded.
“I know that you guys want a fun answer on that, but it’s not my problem,” he said about that hypothetical situation in the Sunday evening’s press conference, flanked by Norris and Piastri on either side. Pressed on it a second time: “Again, my problem. It’s better not to talk about it.”
Verstappen and Red Bull are as starkly contrasted to this McLaren team as you could expect to find. Often (and fairly) framed as a one-man team for a long time now, it’s difficult to imagine the same situation occurring at Red Bull — Verstappen refused a team order to let then-Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez past when he was already world champion at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix. Verstappen’s blatant rebellion went unpunished in the aftermath.
By contrast, McLaren has walked a tightrope all year in trying to provide a fair footing for its two drivers, both of whom have been locked in a razor tight title battle since the season started. The two are remarkably closely matched and are often in sight of each other during races; Monza was no different.
Before analysing what went down properly, a point should be made: McLaren’s latest controversy is ultimately rooted in a good place. Ever since McLaren CEO Zak Brown snatched Piastri from Alpine’s academy and placed him alongside Norris in 2023, he has been convinced he’s had the best driver lineup in modern Formula 1. It’s been hard to argue against that since both became race winners last season, and even harder since they’ve traded blows across this 2024 season as championship rivals.
Going against the norm of most title battles between teammates, and despite what might have been an explosive moment when Norris drove into the back of Piastri in Montreal, the fight has remained respectful and on genuinely good terms. That appeared to still be the case leaving Monza on Sunday. The culture Brown and his team boss Andrea Stella have fostered at McLaren was perhaps best exemplified by the fact that Piastri quickly let a title rival through when asked.
“However the championship goes, what’s important is that the championship runs within the principles and the racing fairness we have at McLaren, and that we have created with our drivers,” Stella said. By the time he had stepped out of the car, Piastri removed any suggestion he would be kicking up a fuss about it afterwards.
“I think today was a fair request,” he said. “Lando qualified ahead, was ahead the whole race and lost that spot through no fault of his own.
“I said what I had to say on the radio. And once I got the second request, then I’m not going to go against the team, I think there’s a lot of people to protect and a culture to protect outside of just Lando and ultimately that’s a very important thing going forward.”
It’s a genuinely admirable approach in a sport where the pursuit of victory often comes at all costs, but Sunday showed where the limitations are. In sticking so closely to the determination for fairness, McLaren risks backing itself into a corner during the title run-in. Sunday felt like a team, even if it was with the best motivations, overthinking and overmeddling in a championship fight which feels like it has plenty more twists and turns to come in the remaining eight races. Sunday’s team order and Piastri’s decision to follow it has muddied what the team’s calls ought to be going forward.
McLaren’s approach to its two racers has not suddenly changed overnight, but it has been tested on multiple occasions. Two examples from 2024 stand out most of all. First was Piastri’s breakout win in Hungary last summer, which came after Norris finally agreed to obey a team order to let the Australian past after he had been shuffled out of the lead unfairly (McLaren and Piastri felt) in the pitstop window. Then came this same venue, Monza’s Italian Grand Prix, and the infamous “papaya rules” moment — 24 hours after Stella had given the team’s racing rules that catchy nickname, it nearly ended in humiliating fashion. On the opening lap Piastri swung around the outside of Norris for the lead, nearly forcing his teammate into a spin. The moment also let Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc into second, which provided him the springboard to his popular win on home soil. The reason for the difference in approach was simply: the two men had a different understanding on what the team’s policy had meant. Piastri felt “papaya rules” meant you can attack aggressively, but without taking needless risk; Norris felt Piastri would not make such a risky overtake in that position full-stop. The rules were re-clarified afterwards.
The team orders conversation has only grown louder this year now McLaren’s drivers are championship rivals. With those two moments from 2024 in mind the team has been much more precise in how it has laid out potential flashpoints like the one on Sunday.
Although Piastri’s radio message had suggested a botched pit-stop was not something that the team considered warranted a team order, Norris contradicted that once the race was over. Asked if he ever doubted Piastri would move over, Norris said: “No. Because it’s what we decided as a team and it’s what we all agreed upon. So…”
While much of the focus will be on the team order itself, McLaren had created the messy situation themselves anyway in the order it stopped the drivers. Usually the lead car gets the first pit-stop, which gives a driver a chance to have the first laps on fresh tyres. A change from the convention made sense to those calling the shots at this point: a safety car shortly after Norris had pitted would have dropped him to third, and potentially given Piastri the chance to pit for free and stay in the lead, or at least in front of Norris. That in itself would have been a headache.
In justifying the call later, Stella was quick to stress this point.
“We pursued the team interest to capitalize as much as possible, and in the team interests we had to go first with Oscar and then with Lando. But the clear intent was this is not going to deliver a swap of positions. So the fact that we went first with Oscar, compounded by the slow pit stop with Lando, led to a swap of positions. And we thought it was absolutely the right thing to go back to the situation preexisting the pit stop and then let the guys race. This is what we did and this is what we think is compliant with our principles.”
But this insistence on righting wrongs has not been totally consistent. Piastri lost the British Grand Prix due to a penalty for his driving under the safety car. On that occasion, perhaps with other team order meetings in mind, Piastri opened his radio channel to suggest that, if McLaren felt the penalty was harsh like he did, they should swap the positions back. McLaren declined on that occasion. Situationally its comparing apples and oranges, but it sums up how tricky a position the team has put itself into and it begs a wider question: who decides what is fair and unfair, and what are the criteria for doing so? And will calls on fairness stack up to scrutiny once a race has finished? The closer we get to the climax of the championship, the more talked about these calls will be.
One team boss who knows the headaches that come with two teammates vying for a drivers’ championship is Toto Wolff, who had to manage Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s increasingly volatile rivalry between 2014 and 2016. Wolff suggested McLaren had opened up a can of worms at Monza.
“Super interesting question,” Wolff said when probed on McLaren’s call. “There is no right and there is no wrong. And I’m curious to see how that ends up. You set a precedent that is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake and it’s not a pitstop, do you switch them around? But then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver that is trying to catch up, lose the points, is not fair either. So I think we are going to get our response of whether that was right today towards the end of the season when it heats up.”
Wolff added later: “What is a team mistake? What if next time around the car doesn’t start up and you lose a position or whatever, the suspension breaks. What do you do then in the next one? So you could have a cascade of events that’s kind of, or precedents, that can be very difficult to manage.”
Those are all fair questions for to consider. And just on botched pitstops alone, there’s no guarantee the next one will be easily reversible. In Sunday’s press conference, McLaren drivers were asked how the team would respond if, at one of 2025’s remaining races, one of them has a perfect weekend ruined by a late, slow stop but end up behind their teammate and a rival not driving a car carrying McLaren’s papaya orange hue.
“We’re not idiots, we have plans for different things,” Norris said. “If there were four cars in between me and Oscar, of course he’s not going to let me back past. But in a situation where we weren’t racing, in a situation where we can just be fair, then you’d expect to be fair as a team. They don’t want to be the reason to upset one driver or another through no fault of their own, and today was not my fault.
“So if I came flat out into my pit box and I hit all my mechanics out the way, I also don’t expect to get the position back. But today was out of my control. In the end, I don’t want it to win this way, through getting given positions or anything like that. And the same thing with Oscar. But we don’t want to lose a win like that either. We do what we think is correct as a team, no matter what you say or what your opinions are, and we stick to doing it our way.”
Piastri hinted at McLaren’s constructors’ championship — which they will retain at a canter — also being an important factor.
“I think if it’s within your control and there’s no other cars involved, it’s quite simple,” Piastri said. “But if there’s other cars involved, we’re not going to give away all of those points to other teams for a mistake. When there’s no cars in between, it’s much easier to rectify it. So to answer your question, if there had been more cars in between, then no, we wouldn’t have swapped back because at that point it does just become very unfortunate.”
McLaren said it would review the final Monza laps in the weeks between now and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sep. 21. One thing is certain, a change in approach is not going to happen.
“If you think that whatever you do is good and you’re not going to have an individual or a team review of anything you do, even the thing you do perfectly, simply you’re not going to progress,” Stella said. “So for me reviewing, it doesn’t mean like, ‘Oh, certainly we will have to change it.’
“Potentially we will review them and we will further align on them and we will confirm them. So the fact that I use this word doesn’t mean that there will be changes. The fact that I use this word means that that’s how we approach things at McLaren.
“And this review, which is so essential in engineering, in operation, does apply as well in the way you go racing, and does apply in the way you go racing with your drivers.”