McLaren consider team orders to aid Norris title bid

McLaren are to consider imposing team orders in favour of Lando Norris in an attempt to beat Max Verstappen to the Formula 1 drivers’ World Championship.

The team will discuss the matter internally after Norris’ team-mate Oscar Piastri finished in second place in the Italian Grand Prix, ahead of the Briton, but both were beaten by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc despite starting with a front-row lock-out.

Verstappen said that “at the moment both championships are not realistic” for him after his Red Bull finished in an uncompetitive sixth place.

The Dutchman’s lead has been cut by Norris to 62 points with eight races to go, and a maximum of 232 points available. This means Norris has to reduce Verstappen’s lead by an average of 7.75 points a race – slightly more than the difference between first and second place.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said: “Max is good even with his tongue, not only on track.

“He knows the car he is driving at the moment seems to provide him with some challenges, but we need to be better at capitalising on the opportunities that Red Bull seem to offer by not being in their usual possibility of competing for podiums.

“I hope we will be in condition to have these situations frequently in the future.”

Stella said McLaren would adjust their intra-team rules “such that they allow us to pursue in the best possible manner both the constructors’ championship and the drivers’ championship”.

The Italian said: “We have now to acknowledge that not only the constructors’ championship is possible but – with the performance we have at the moment in the car, and some of the struggle we see with Red Bull – even the drivers’ is definitely possible.

“If we can achieve both, we need to put the team and Lando in position to pursue both championships.

“Both drivers are mathematically in condition to do so but Lando is in the best position from a numbers point of view and we are fighting Max Verstappen. So if we want to give support to one driver, we have to pick the one in the best position.”

Norris said he would welcome such a decision, but with a degree of equivocation.

“I would love it,” Norris said. “It’s not up to me. It’s tough, because obviously I think, as any driver, you don’t want it. You don’t want things to just be played that way.

“I wouldn’t say we’re running out of time, but time is going away slowly, and I still believe we can do it.

“The best way simply is just to win the race. And I didn’t do that today because of some silly things.”

Stella said the team had discussed the championship situation before the race and he admitted that, had the race turned out differently, McLaren would have considered ways to “make sure Lando had his own opportunities”.

He said that, had Leclerc not been contesting the win, “we could have played with some other variables that didn’t necessarily mean ‘now we swap position’, because it looks a little brutal to ask a driver who is going to win a race to swap positions.

“Now we see McLaren can compete in circuits where last year we were not competitive,” Stella said. “This could be a very important weapon for Lando, in particular, in the quest for the championship.”

Stella has long experience in F1 and knows the impact of team orders.

Before joining McLaren, he was a race engineer for both Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso at Ferrari, when both benefited from calls by the team to promote them ahead of the team-mates – Rubens Barrichello in Schumacher’s case and Felipe Massa in Alonso’s.

“Even with Ferrari when there was a successful driver, the successful driver was successful because he gained the success on track,” Stella said.

“Even in the cases when there was a blatant support of one of the drivers, I am not sure that didn’t actually backfire.

“If one driver doesn’t kind of accept that we have a certain way of going racing, we are not going to succeed.”

But he emphasised that helping Norris would be in Piastri’s interests.

“If you support your team-mate winning the championship, for the team it is a big boost,” Stella said. “If we win both titles, it is a massive boost, and he benefits from a big boost to the team – even if he is the other driver.

“Because we don’t have to forget Oscar is in the middle of his second season of F1. The future is Oscar’s.

“He needs to make sure when it is the time to support, the support he gives to the team and Lando, for him is an investment.”

Verstappen urged his team to quickly sort out their problems, calling their weekend at Monza “bad”.

He qualified seventh and was able to rise a place only because Mercedes driver George Russell incurred damage in an incident at the first corner.

“The car is undriveable,” Verstappen said. “It is a massive balance problem we have and that, of course, is not only over one lap but also in the race.

“We basically went from a very dominant car to an undriveable car in the space of six to eight months. That is very weird for me and we need to really turn the car upside down.”

After taking four wins from the first five races of the season, Verstappen has not won since the Spanish Grand Prix in June, six races ago, and team principal Christian Horner admitted Red Bull had the fourth fastest car in Monza.

Asked where their pace had gone in recent races, Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko told BBC Sport: “We lost it with some updates. We have to go back to when the car had a better balance.”

He added the team would have to revert to a previous specification of car that handled better.

Red Bull’s decline has coincided with the departure from the F1 programme of chief technical officer Adrian Newey.

In the wake of allegations of sexual harassment made against Horner by a female employee – which he has been cleared of by two internal Red Bull investigations, each dismissing the complaint against him – Newey negotiated an early exit from his contract that enables him to join another team from March next year.

Both Horner and Verstappen have downplayed the potential link between the end of Newey’s involvement and the team’s decline.

Horner insisted: “I think we would have had all these issues [anyway] because they were already there, and one man’s input could never be so dramatic so quickly.”

Verstappen said: “I’ve always said I would have liked Adrian to stay. Always. But it’s not about that now.

“Last year we had a great car that was the most dominant car ever and we basically turned it into a monster, so we have to turn it around.”

Two key moments defined McLaren’s race. First, Piastri passed Norris at the second chicane on the first lap, and the manoeuvre delayed Norris, allowing Leclerc to move into second place.

Then, Piastri pitted out of the lead for a second pit stop but Leclerc stayed out, and he was able to keep his tyres together well enough to hang on ahead of the McLarens.

Stella said they would “review” the first-lap incident before deciding whether it fitted with their rules on the way the drivers can race together – known internally as “the papaya rules”, after the team’s colour scheme – and adjust those guidelines accordingly.

And he admitted it was a “question mark” as to whether McLaren could have won if they had committed to a one-stop with Piastri. Both McLarens struggled more with ‘graining’ – where the tyres tear and lose grip – than Ferrari.

Piastri said a one-stop strategy would have been “a big risk”. Norris, whose tyre wear was worse than his team-mate’s, said it was “hard to know” whether he could have done a one stop.

Stella said: “In hindsight, especially with Oscar, after the [first] stop, if we had driven the car to drive for a one stop, even if we see the graining on the hard [tyres], we don’t get too worried and just try and respond to Leclerc, then I think the victory could have been possible.

“Or car tends to be good on rear tyres but on front graining we tend to be on the aggressive side, so this made us a bit nervous.”

Leclerc’s win, after some upgrades to the Ferrari, suggests they may be in condition to fight for victory at some races from now on, although Verstappen said he was “not worried” about their threat in the championship.

The next race, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, is a circuit where Leclerc has always excelled. That is followed by Singapore, where last year Ferrari won with Carlos Sainz – the only time Red Bull were beaten in a grand prix all year. And Las Vegas, three races from the end of the season, is a similar type of track to Monza and a place where Leclerc came close to winning last year.

Stella added: “There may be a misunderstanding that the McLaren was by far the fastest car. Leclerc was as fast as McLaren today because he could stay with Oscar in the first stint and, when you can stay with the race leader in dirty air, it means you are at least as fast.

“And even in the second stint he was behind two McLarens and he could stay with them.

“Ferrari this weekend were as competitive as us, at least with Leclerc, which for us is bad news because it meant we couldn’t simply cruise and we need to deal with them.

“But at the same time it is good news, because we have more cars that can take points off Red Bull.”