12/09/2024
NEWS STORY
"What we don't want to see any more is a situation like in Monza," says Andrea Stella as McLaren prioritises Lando Norris' title bid.
With 8 races remaining, and Norris 62 points adrift of the world champion, as opposed to Piastri's 86 point deficit, in order to avoid situations like Monza, and to give its British driver the best chance of overhauling Max Verstappen, McLaren has reluctantly opted to institute basic team orders.
"We will bias our support to Lando," Stella told the BBC, "but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles.
"Our principles are that the team interest always comes first," added the Italian. "Sportsmanship for us is important in the overall way we go racing. And then we want to be fair to both drivers."
Indeed, ahead of the Monza race, the team was still insisting that its two drivers were "free to race" one another, however, Piastri's move on his teammate at the second chicane, which subsequently saw the Briton drop to third appeared to catch everyone off guard.
Though both McLaren drivers joined Charles Leclerc on the podium it presented the team with a major problem especially as the question of prioritising one driver over the other had been on the radar for some time as Piastri became more established and confident within the team.
"What we don't want to see any more is a situation like in Monza in which we enter a chicane P1/P2 and we exit P1/P3," admitted Stella, who since the race has held a number of meetings with both drivers.
"Because that is a detriment to the team," he added. "The team interests come first and these are the situations that above all we need to fix because eventually, as a matter of fact, the way we entered the race in Monza left the door open this situation.
"After Monza, three objectives: we need to make sure that anything that happens on track is not to the detriment of the team. Second objective, how do we win both championships, both drivers committed to help? But what we don't want to do is win in a reckless way.
"Those are the three topics and they define the way we go racing in Baku. This will be updated after Baku."
Asked about how the drivers have reacted following the meetings, Stella said: "The conversations have been very collaborative. Even when I said to Oscar: 'Would you be available to give up a victory?' He said: 'It's painful, but if it's the right thing to do now, I will do it'.
"Every driver is hard-wired to go for a victory," the Italian continued. "So I am always very impressed by the level of team spirit and maturity and collaboration that we found in this period.
"Lando wants to win because he deserved the victory on track. It's OK to be occasionally supported by your team-mate, but you don't want to use, systematically, ways of adjusting the race just for the sake of the points when your team-mate is scoring in a way that he deserves. This is not the way McLaren want to win, or the way Lando wants to win.
"If I ask Lando, he would say: 'I am comfortable if in Abu Dhabi I miss a few points that I could have got with some actions, but if those actions were not right at the time, then, you know what? We keep strong as a team, the team is stable and cohesive, we will give it a go next year'."
Referring to the 'papaya rules' raised at Monza, Stella said: "The 'papaya rules' only have to do with racing with no risks, no contact between the two McLarens and respectfully. That's it. It's just a quick way to remind our drivers, 'Guys, don't take too much risk in fighting each other'."
The drivers' title aside, it is the Constructors' Championship that decides the prize money, and with just 8 points separating Red Bull and McLaren, Stella admits that the team must lose sight of the big prize.
"We need to be careful that while we focus the conversation and the attention on to the drivers', we don't lose sight on the fact that the constructors' is at least a three-headed quest."