McLaren will review the progress of the Italian Grand Prix and consider the team order after the latest race weekend showed Lando Norris has a realistic chance of winning the Drivers’ Championship.
Norris started on pole at Monza but was overtaken on the outside while braking at the second chicane by team-mate Oscar Piastri, who led for much of the race. But Charles Leclerc’s one-stop strategy saw Ferrari take the win ahead of Piastri and Norris, who now sits 62 points behind Max Verstappen, and team principal Andrea Stella said McLaren would now analyse how to implement the team’s orders.
“We need to review the video with the drivers, understand their perspective, and then assess together whether they are fully compliant. [with pre-race instructions] “Or maybe not,” said Stella.
“We will learn what they need to learn and then apply the Papaya Rule to pursue the Constructors’ Championship and the Drivers’ Championship in the best possible way.
“Now we have to be in a position where we can acknowledge that not only is a constructor’s championship possible, but from a driver’s perspective, given the performance we’ve shown with the car and some of the challenges we’ve seen at Red Bull, it’s definitely possible.
“So if we can do both as a team, if we’re going to do both, we have to get the team in shape and Lando in shape and win both championships.”
McLaren were not considering a driver change in the final stages of the race, where Piastri took second and Norris third, but Stella said there had been previous discussions about the drivers’ championship.
“In our conversations before this race, we recognized that Landau is in the best position from a driver’s championship perspective,” he said. “We talked to Oscar, we talked to Landau, we talked together, and that defines our rules of engagement.
“We have to look at the first lap, but it has to be done in a competent, detailed and concrete way, taking into account the video and the expectations of the drivers, and then looking at what we can learn from this situation to adjust for future situations. Apart from the fact that we want to challenge for the championship with Lando.”
Stella believes McLaren have little chance of winning on Sunday with a one-stop strategy, but says losing to Ferrari has its positives, as a number of drivers will be in a position to take points away from Verstappen in the remaining eight races.
“I want to exploit the car’s competitiveness more,” he said. “In terms of racing, I think there’s a misconception that McLaren is the fastest car. I think Leclerc is as fast as a McLaren. He was able to keep up with Oscar in the first stunt and generally, if he can keep up with the race leader in dirty air, he’s at least as fast as the race leader.
“That usually leads to a bit of a drop off, like Leclerc did at the end of the first stunt. And then in the second stunt he was behind the two McLarens but still able to keep up with them. If you look at practice and qualifying, I think the lap times were essentially within the noise that makes up a lap.
“So I think Ferrari were as competitive as we were this weekend, at least with Leclerc. It was bad news for us. We couldn’t just cruise through the race, we had to compete with them and they played to their strengths.
“But at the same time it’s good news because there are more cars that can take points away from Red Bull. In fact I think it’s better news for us and we have to make the most of the potential that the car has, even if it means that on this type of circuit Ferrari will be very serious about winning.”
