Wolff on McLaren team orders: They decided to do right thing

McLaren locked out the front row of the starting grid of last Sunday's Formula 1 race in Budapest, with Lando Norris on pole and Oscar Piastri in second.

However at the start, Piastri overtook Norris and stayed in the lead, that is until McLaren's strategy - which they claimed was to cover Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton - put the Briton in the lead.

The team ordered Norris to slow down and allow Piastri to close in and switch positions, something the former resisted for a long time before obeying the order almost two laps from the end, handing the latter the lead and his first F1 career win.

That situation put McLaren in the spotlight regarding teams order and how they employed them, keeping in mind the pitwall communications with Norris were far from flattering to say the least.

Mercedes have been in that position in their dominant years with Hamilton and Nico Rosberg and then with Valtteri Bottas, so their boss Toto Wolff has had some previous experience of such situations.

Facing the media in Budapest last Sunday, including GrandPrix247, Wolff was asked about the manner in which McLaren managed their drivers.

He said: "You can only manage the situation when you actually run into it and you find yourself exposed. That is the first time that it happened to them.

"We only learned from our experiences, how we can manage a situation where two cars, two drivers can win in the same team and you like to collect points without giving up a Drivers' Championship. I am sure they are going to sit down and come up... we came up back in the day first with the rules of engagement and then we didn't want to call it rules anymore so we called it racing intent.

"I am sure there is going to be a paper soon that is going to come out. I have no doubt that Andrea [Stella] and Zak [Brown] have very strong leadership and it is about defining that framework, what is happening in each of those possible situations.

"In Hungary, we had the same situation with Lewis and Valtteri, almost the same," Wolff recalled. "We asked to invert the cars, promised to Valtteri that if Lewis couldn't overtake Kimi [Raikkonen], I believe it was, then we would revert back, and we did it.

"We stood to our values even though Lewis was in the championship at that stage. This is what McLaren decided to do today, the right thing, stand by what they said and now they will go and discuss with the drivers 'what do we want to do going forward'," the Austrian maintained.

Mercedes beat Red Bull in the race in Hungary, Max Verstappen unable to pass Hamilton, as the pair clashed towards the end dropping the Dutchman down to fifth.

"I am not sure we were quicker than Max today," Wolff commented. "We beat him on track but on pure race time, probably not. What we have to acknowledge now is that McLaren are clearly leading the field under any condition.

"That is the new benchmark. It is great that there is another team that has made the jump and is able to score first and second. It is good for all of us.

"But in these conditions, we were not on a level to reach them. I am happy for them," Wolff concluded.