Have McLaren opened can of worms with ‘murky’ F1 driver swap?

Jolyon Palmer is concerned McLaren have opened a can of worms with their “murky” team orders call at the Italian Grand Prix.

McLaren reversed the order of their drivers in the closing laps of Sunday’s race at Monza after Lando Norris, who had been running second throughout most of the grand prix, suffered a slow pit stop due to a wheel gun issue.

Norris pitted one lap after Oscar Piastri after agreeing to allow his teammate and direct championship rival stop first in a bid to protect McLaren’s 2-3 ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

The Briton dropped behind Piastri following their respective stops and McLaren reacted by ordering championship leader Piastri aside. Piastri initially questioned the call but ultimately obliged.

Both drivers felt McLaren’s policy of keeping the title fight as even-handed as possible was fair, but the controversial stance has also been met with criticism.

Former Renault F1 driver Palmer believes McLaren have set an awkward precedent for the remaining eight races of the season after Piastri saw his championship lead cut down to 31 points. 

“I would say the engineering started before the pit stop phase, because Lando was given the choice of whether he wanted to pit first or second and he said I’m not going to pit second if Piastri will undercut me, and that’s effectively what happened with the slow stop,” Palmer said on F1 TV’s Post-Race Show.

“It’s just a bit murky isn't it where they are allowed to race and where they are not. Obviously Andrea thinks things are streamlined, Oscar didn’t think that in the car at the time.

“I think the first thing is, Lando drove better this weekend, so from a driver point of view, it’s probably the right result. But then these things happen in racing and it might happen again. I just feel like they may have opened a can of worms here because what happens if the pit stop is seven seconds, or eight seconds, does the driver then have to back off even more?

“We’ve seen also at times this year in Hungary, where Oscar was the better driver through the weekend, and Lando effectively overcut or did the different strategy to win the race and Oscar finished on his gearbox but there was no change they were going to swap positions around even if the team strategy on the day favoured Lando to win.

“Difficult one, but if the drivers are happy with it then that will be that. I will just be surprised if it doesn’t rear it’s head again before the end of the season.”

Were McLaren right to swap drivers around?

Seven-time grand prix winner and former McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya had no issue with the call, arguing: “I think McLaren doesn’t want to be part of the drivers’ championship. They want whoever drives better to win and they don’t want to be part of it.

“I think they feel really bad for what happened to Lando in the last race and they thought ‘we took points away because of a mechanical issue’, and that’s part of racing, but I think they were very clear in the intent today.

“I understand everybody’s point of view but I think it was a good way of going ‘hey, if we think what is fair is fair as a team, we need to go as a team’ and make sure we don’t piss anybody off. This way they are both pissed off but not massively.

“It’s the best way of being neutral and saying we want to be a white flag and whoever wins the championship as a driver is because he drove better and we want to have the least input in it.”

Jacques Villeneuve also felt it was a fair team order given the specific circumstances.

“In this instance, yes, it was only for a second place,” said the 1997 world champion.

“Minimal points, make it look good and rebalance it. Remember they had to rebalance it from Hungary last year which gave Oscar his first win.

“Also Norris was supposed to come in first. He had the lead of the two drivers and he said ‘no, it’s okay, put Oscar in first to protect him from Ferrari’ and that’s also what made the difference. So it was fair to rebalance it that way.

“If it had happened under pit stop too bad, but there had been that swap early on with who would pit first. That’s why they did it.”