McLaren F1 team orders saga at Italian GP will “weigh heavily” on Oscar Piastri

Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer has suggested McLaren’s controversial use of team orders at the Italian Grand Prix “will weigh heavily” on Oscar Piastri.

McLaren were beaten on merit for the first time in F1 2025 at Monza last time out.

Max Verstappen stormed to a dominant victory from pole position, winning by over 19 seconds.

Lando Norris was on course to finish second ahead of title rival Piastri.

Unusually, McLaren decided to pit Piastri first, to cover off Charles Leclerc behind.

Norris stopped one lap later, but a slow pit stop meant he dropped behind his teammate.

McLaren intervened with team orders to make sure Norris got back ahead of Piastri.

McLaren have insisted they want to be “fair” in the F1 title race and that the slow stop was entirely out of Norris’ hands.

Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast, Palmer feels the team orders drama will still be on McLaren’s mind ahead of this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“It’ll weigh heavily on him [Piastri], won’t it? The team will now start to think, ‘did we definitely handle that right in Monza?’” Palmer said.

“You have to bang the table for everything that you can get. I don’t know if this is going to be the one where it really comes to fruition, but at some point this year, it just has to because of the history of the F1 title battles. Surely something has to give.”

Piastri, Norris could question McLaren approach

With eight rounds to go, there’s just 31 points between Piastri and Norris at the top of the drivers’ championship.

There have been very few flashpoints this season.

Norris ran into the back of Piastri at the Canadian Grand Prix.

However, Piastri came away from the incident unscathed as Norris failed to finish.

Norris immediately apologised for the clash and McLaren quickly moved on as a team.

Palmer is anticipating that both drivers will question McLaren’s approach as the title race goes down to the wire.

“When I was driving and I was having my worst ever weekend in Baku, I was thinking ‘how is the equality in the team?’” Palmer added.

“Because you’re driving the same car. You want an equal opportunity, but you’re thinking, ‘Am I getting the love of the team?’

“‘Am I getting the new parts, the best strategy, the best pit stops?’ Why are Lando’s pit stops routinely fractionally slower than Oscar’s or very much slower in Monza?

“And you start to think, ‘why are these things not quite falling in my favour?’

“Both of them will be thinking that. Will we see one of them be a little bit more killer in Baku?

“I don’t know - I think the way that McLaren is managing this is quite contrived, to be fair, but they have got two compliant drivers still, and I don’t know if it’s going to change yet.”