Lando Norris has confirmed that McLaren’s stance on team orders is to be “refreshed” for F1 2025 after he “earned the right” to “privileges” over Oscar Piastri last season.
briefly threatening to ignore the team’s requests to swap positions with Piastri in Hungary.
Lando Norris confirms McLaren team orders ‘refresh’ for F1 2025
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
The team’s ‘papaya rules’ code emerged as a theme of the second half of the season after McLaren were widely criticised for failing to implement team orders at the start of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where Piastri overtook Norris for the lead on the opening lap.
That set up a race-long battle between the pair, with the McLaren drivers eventually losing out to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella declared ahead of the next race in Azerbaijan that the team would show a “bias” towards Norris for the remainder of the season to support the British driver in his title aspirations against Max Verstappen.
Explained: McLaren’s papaya rules
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However, the roles were reversed in Baku with Norris helping Piastri see off Leclerc in the fight for victory. Piastri later gifted the win of the Brazilian GP sprint race to Norris before his team-mate returned the favour in Qatar.
Norris ultimately fell 63 points short of the Drivers’ Championship as Verstappen secured his fourth consecutive crown, with McLaren coming away from F1 2024 with their first Constructors’ title in 26 years.
Piastri recently revealed that he is aiming to avoid falling into a support role by making a better start to the F1 2025 season, having waited until the eighth race in Monaco for his first podium of last year.
And Norris has admitted that Piastri will be allowed to compete for inter-team supremacy this season, with McLaren’s stance on team orders reset over the winter.
He told media including Vivid Bulletin: “[2025] is a refresh and Oscar has an opportunity to fight for a championship too.
“A lot of what you guys write about and talk about has been because of the championship fight, the Drivers’ Championship fight, and that’s where a lot of talk and things started.
“And I earned my right to have some of those privileges.
“I earned my right by doing a good job through the whole season, to be given that opportunity.
“I don’t go around asking for it. And it’s certainly not how I want to win a championship. I want to go out and give Max a fair fight and do my part and earn it my way.
“Sometimes there’s inclusions, which is Oscar helping me on a couple of occasions.
“Everyone spoke like it was going to be every race. We went into Baku and it was actually the opposite way around. I did a little bit there and then Oscar helped me win in Brazil.
“Sadly, things turned for the worse on Sunday and the opportunity was gone, but I repaid it [in the Qatar sprint].
“So I think it’s our strength as a team. I don’t think other teams work this way.
“And it’s definitely a part of why we are where we are as a team now, why we are the top team in Formula 1, and why [we were] fighting for the win in the Constructors’ [in 2024].”
Norris’s comments come after McLaren chief executive Zak Brown claimed that the British driver will be better equipped to “deal with” Verstappen in F1 2024 after coming off worse in on-track battles with the Red Bull man last season.
: “I think Lando has learned how to fight against Max.
‘Because Max has been very open about how he drives. If you try to overtake him on the outside, he won’t let you.
“But Lando gave him a great fight in Mexico and also made sure that there was no clash between the two of them. We were fighting for the Constructors‘ title and we couldn’t afford to be too aggressive.
“So Lando did the right thing and I think he knows exactly how to deal with Max on the track.
“I am convinced that he will perform differently next year.”
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