McLaren warned of ‘very difficult precedent to undo’ by Toto Wolff
Toto Wolff has warned McLaren of 'very difficult precedent to undo'
McLaren’s decision to use team orders after a slow pit stop cost Lando Norris a position to Oscar Piastri at the Italian Grand Prix sets a precedent that Toto Wolff has warned is “very difficult to undo”.
Racing for second place behind Max Verstappen, Norris was ahead of his teammate when a slow pit stop, the result of an issue with tightening the wheel nut on his front left tyre, saw the Briton fall behind the championship leader.
McLaren told: You have to define whatever path you choose
McLaren asked Piastri to cede the position to his teammate, his race engineer Tom Stallard saying: “Oscar, this is a bit like Hungary last year. We pitted in this order for team reasons. Please let Lando past and then you are free to race.”
Piastri briefly argued his case, “I mean, we said that a slow pit stop was part of racing, so I don’t really get what’s changed here, but if you really want to do it, then I’ll do it,” before moving over for his teammate.
Piastri later accepted that it was a “fair request” given Norris had lost the position through no fault of his own.
It has, however, created debate with the big question being whether, by ordering Piastri to move over for Norris, the Aussie paid the price for a mistake that wasn’t his own doing.
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“There is no right and there is no wrong,” Wolff told PlanetF1.com’s Thomas Maher and other publications at Monza. “And I’m curious to see how that ends out.
“You set a precedent that is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake and it’s not a pit stop, do you switch them around?
“But then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver that is trying to catch up lose the points is not fair either.
“So I think we are going to get our response of whether that was right today towards the end of the season when it heats up.”
Quizzed on whether McLaren had played a “dangerous game” in the name of fairness that could lead to resentment, Wolff said only time will tell if Sunday’s team orders have repercussions for the Woking team.
“There’s not a clear cut answer for today,” he declared.
“The answer [over] whether managing it that way it’s going to come towards the end of the season, if it’s going to get more fierce. I think the team made a mistake, the team inverted the positions, absolutely fair decision.
“On the other side, you know… What is a team mistake? What if next time around the car doesn’t start up and you lose a position or whatever, or the suspension breaks? What do you do then in the next one?
“So you could have a cascade of events or precedents that can be very difficult to manage. But I can only speak of how we find ourselves in this situation back on all those years that we had to manage.
“And I think most important is to have a clear strategy. You either go like this or you go the other way around. Either let them race or try to balance it in the most possible fair way bearing in mind that he’ll be back there at the end.”
He added: “You have to define whatever path you choose, and it’s a luxury problem. They can’t lose those championships anymore.”
Toto Wolff: McLaren rivalry ‘very different’ to Mercedes F1 2016
Wolff’s assessment comes from experience, the team principal having had to manage Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s intra-team title fight that came to a head in F1 2016.
Such was the animosity between the two protagonists, it ended a boyhood friendship.
Wolff, though, doesn’t see the McLaren rivalry playing out in the same manner.
“I think we had two different animals in the car,” he said of Hamilton and Rosberg’s rivalry compared to Piastri and Norris’s.
“They were two assassins – the assassin’s not the right word. There were two fierce combatants that took no prisoners, racing against each other. At times, very difficult to manage for the team. I don’t see that at McLaren.
“I think we had two different animals in the car,” he added. “You know, Lewis and Nico, they were two fierce combatants that took no prisoners racing against each other.
“At times, very difficult to manage for the team. I don’t see that at McLaren… it’s a bit corporate.
“I think, first of all, where it was difficult for us in 2016, they were there for a long time. Lewis was a World Champion.
“It was two lions in the car that went at each other’s throats. That’s very different today.”
The Austrian revealed that in hindsight he would take a more hands-off approach to an intra-team title fight by allowing the drivers to race freely rather than trying to control the situation.
“I think if I look at our situations” he explained, “because I’m not in the shoes of McLaren, back in the day, with the kind of gap you have where Constructors’ Championship is guaranteed, you just let them race, but within the spirit.
“You have your race fair and square, you don’t touch. That’s the rule. And if back in the day you touch, then we take control. That’s what I would have done maybe better in 2016 rather than trying to overmanage with our racing intent.”
Piastri left Monza with a 31-point lead over Norris in the race for the F1 2025 Drivers’ title with eight race weekends remaining.
