McLaren sparked controversy during the 2025 Italian Grand Prix when they asked Oscar Piastri to hand over his position to his teammate Lando Norris after the latter suffered a slow pit stop.
Norris was the fastest McLaren driver at Monza and qualified ahead of Piastri while also leading him throughout the race as the team went long before deciding to pit both drivers for fresh tyres.
McLaren called Piastri in first and asked him not to undercut Norris, which in other words meant: Behave on the in and out lap. The Australian obeyed.
But then the team messed up Norris' pit stop as his front left tyre got stuck, which meant his teammate passed him out on track, prompting the team to instruct Piastri to relinquish his position.
Team orders in Formula 1 are always a reason for debate, but that becomes more so when teammates are fighting for the Championship, which is the case with Norris and Piastri.
Piastri reflected on his race and said: "I’m not overly disappointed. It’s clear today as a team we didn’t have the pace to match Max.
"On my side, the first half of the race I struggled a bit with the balance," he added. "After that things improved as the medium tyre got older. 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."
The team order are something to discuss
When it came to the team orders incident, Piastri toed the team line saying: "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 learned. Qualifying further ahead helps you out, and 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," he concluded.
It was interesting that Piastri's engineer brought up the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix when asking him to let Norris by.
Piastri was ahead of Norris in Hungary last year, but a pit stop put the Briton ahead, and while the team asked him to give the position back, he resisted till the final laps of the race, when he finally allowed his teammate by, the latter taking his maiden F1 win.
It was a call from the McLaren pit wall
McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella weighed in on the orders given to his drivers saying: "It was definitely a call from the pit wall.
“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," the Italian maintained.
"I want to thank Oscar because he didn’t make it difficult at all," Stella continued. "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 championship, and we go racing the McLaren way—what we think is fair and what we think is sportsmanlike.
"That’s what we did today," Stella concluded.
Piastri still leads Norris in the 2025 F1 Championship by 31 points.
Big Question: Do you think McLaren's team orders in the 2025 Italian Grand Prix were the right thing to do?
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