McLaren walking a ‘tightrope’ as Toto Wolff casts team orders verdict

Toto Wolff accepts McLaren are between a “rock and a hard place” as they weigh up the “best” driver on the day versus the Drivers’ Championship.

Although McLaren made up ground against Red Bull in both championships at Monza, instead of being 62 points down on Max Verstappen, Lando Norris could’ve walked away from Sunday’s race 59 points off the pace.

Toto Wolff says McLaren are ‘walking’ a ‘tightrope’

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

In fact, he could’ve been just 52 points down had McLaren not only ordered Oscar Piastri to let him through at the Italian Grand Prix but also kept them 1-2 with Norris ahead in Hungary.

At a time when McLaren, based on today’s trajectory, could genuinely fight Red Bull for not only the Constructors’ but also the drivers’ title, Wolff believes his McLaren counterpart Andrea Stella made a mistake on Sunday.

“I think as a racing team that is battling at the front suddenly, you are between a rock and a hard place because on one side they are racers like we are racers,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com at Monza.

“We want to make sure that the best man wins but on the other side when it starts to become dysfunctional and impacting your team performance then how do you react to that.

“The team is always on the losing end because if you freeze positions and have team orders then you have maybe not what our racing soul wants to do but the rational side needs to prevail.

“At the end you don’t want to lose out on a championship by three or five points that you could have easily made. So walking that tightrope is so difficult and there is no universal truth of how to handle it.”

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Stella, however, has since conceded McLaren may have to favour Norris in the coming races as while both drivers can “mathematically” win the title, Norris is the “best position from a numbers point of view“.

He added: “We are fighting Max Verstappen so I think if we want to give support to one driver, we definitely have to pick the one that is in the best position.”

Wolff reckons Stella understands what is at stake.

“There is nobody that understands sport more than Andrea. He has seen it all of that pan out in front of his eyes multiple times at Ferrari,” he added.

“He has that racers’ soul that doesn’t want to do it and wants to let them race but I think they are going to come to some conclusion after this race, how are we handling this?

“This is when we started to introduce the rules of engagement and then we changed the wording to racing intent because ‘rules’ was too harsh as a word for the drivers.”

McLaren spoke of the ‘papaya rules’ ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix which effectively are the rules of engagement in a Grand Prix to keep it clean and respect that the team wants both cars to score points.

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