‘Happy not the word’ - McLaren drivers react to team order controversy

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris both believe McLaren were fair with the team orders call which sparked controversy at the end of the Italian Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen’s dominant victory at Monza overshadowed by McLaren’s late instruction to tell Piastri to concede second place to Norris after a slow pit stop dropped the Briton behind his teammate and direct title rival.

A wheel gun issue resulted in Norris’s pit stop being four seconds slower than Piastri and meant he lost track position to the Australian, who was then ordered by McLaren to let his championship rival back through.

Piastri, who enjoyed a clean pit stop the lap before Norris, questioned the reasoning behind the call in an awkward radio exchange but ultimately obliged as the Woking squad settled with a 2-3 finish behind Verstappen’s Red Bull.

The result has seen Norris cut Piastri’s F1 championship advantage down to 31 points with eight races remaining this season.

“I don’t know if happy is the word but I’m not overly disappointed. It’s clear today as a team we didn’t have the pace to match Max,” Piastri reflected afterwards.

“On my side, the first half of the race I struggled a bit with the balance. After that things improved quite a bit as the medium tyre got older. So I felt really comfortable and strong, but we needed to pit at some point. Not too many missed opportunities I don’t think, just not quite the pace and didn’t get the job done in qualifying either.

“It’s something we’ll discuss for sure. When you’re in the same team, it’s the same pit crew, same mechanics, there’s a lot at stake not just for us but the whole team. I think today the decision to swap back was fair.

“Lando was ahead of me the whole race so I don’t have any issues with that. But we’ll definitely discuss it.

“There was nothing revolutionary from this weekend that I learnt, I think it was the same things - qualifying further ahead helps you out. I think I know what I like and don’t like from the car. Trying to make sure we don’t end up in that spot again.”

Norris felt the way McLaren handled the situation was fair.

“Why should things get defined like that? We were still free to race after,” he said. “In fact he gained on the whole situation, he had DRS, he could fight against me, so I still lost out all the way through it.

“The same thing would have happened if it was vice-versa, if Oscar had a worse pit stop and ended up behind. I would have had to let him through. I earned my right to be ahead and to have that fairness.

“None of us want it to happen like this. I don’t choose for these things to happen. I don’t want to let him past or have to get let past. But we have to do what we think is correct as a team.

“We don’t care what others say, what their opinions are about it. We do it the way we want to and the way we think is correct.”

McLaren boss explain decision

While the decision split opinion in the paddock, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insisted it was “the tight thing to do”.

“It was definitely a call from the pit wall,” the Italian told Sky Sports F1.

“It was a call because we’d not only had the problem at the pit lane but we also sequenced the cars’ pit stops in a way where we definitely wanted to retain the position after the pit stop, but somehow the position changed. So we felt the right thing to do was to go back to the original position and let them race.

“I want to thank Oscar because he didn’t make it difficult at all., Once again, Oscar and Lando showed the principles and values we have going racing.

“We have two great drivers, two drivers in condition to fight for the world champion, and we go racing the McLaren way – what we think is fair and what we think is sportsmanlike. That’s what we did today.”