McLaren are to prioritise Lando Norris over team-mate Oscar Piastri in their bid to win both Formula 1 world championships this year.
But team principal Andrea Stella said any actions taken to back Norris in the drivers’ title chase would happen only within the team’s principles of sportsmanship and fairness.
Stella told BBC Sport: “The overall concept is we are incredibly determined to win, but we want to win in the right way.”
Norris heads into this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix 62 points behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the drivers’ championship with a maximum of 232 still available.
Piastri is in fourth place in the championship, 106 points behind Verstappen.
Stella, speaking in an exclusive interview, said: “We [will] bias our support to Lando but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles.
“Our principles are that the team interest always comes first. Sportsmanship for us is important in the overall way we go racing. And then we want to be fair to both drivers.”
Until now, McLaren had allowed Norris and Piastri to race each other without interference from the team.
The shift in policy towards finding ways to boost Norris’ chances of beating Verstappen to the drivers’ title comes after a series of meetings between McLaren bosses and their drivers following the Italian Grand Prix.
In Monza, Norris and Piastri qualified first and second but the Australian overtook the Briton on the first lap and the incident led to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc getting between the two McLarens. Leclerc went on to win the race, from Piastri and Norris. Verstappen finished an uncompetitive sixth.
Stella said: “What we don’t want to see any more is a situation like in Monza in which we enter a chicane P1/P2 and we exit P1/P3. Because that is a detriment to the team.
“The team interests comes first and these are the situations that above all we need to fix because eventually, as a matter of fact, the way we entered the race in Monza left the door open this situation.
“After Monza, three objectives: we need to make sure that anything that happens on track is not to the detriment of the team.
“Second objective, how do we win both championships, both drivers committed to help?
“But what we don’t want to do is win in a reckless way.
“Those are the three topics and they define the way we go racing in Baku. This will be updated after Baku.”
Both drivers on board
Verstappen dominated the first part of the season, and has taken seven victories, when no other driver has more than two wins.
But the Dutchman has not won for six races, since the Spanish Grand Prix in June, and Red Bull admit they are lost in understanding why their car has fallen back in terms of performance compared to McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes
Stella said both McLaren drivers had bought into the shift in philosophy.
“The conversations have been very collaborative,” he said.
“Even when I said to Oscar: ‘Would you be available to give up a victory?’ He said: ‘It’s painful, but if it’s the right thing to do now, I will do it’.
“Every driver is hard-wired to go for a victory. So I am always very impressed by the level of team spirit and maturity and collaboration that we found in this period.”
Stella refused to give details of the sort of choices that might be made in Norris’ favour but said decisions would be made on an ad hoc basis as to whether any interference between the two drivers was “worthwhile”.
And he emphasised that Norris was on board with the idea of not going all out in acting in his favour in every way.
“Lando wants to win because he deserved the victory on track,” Stella said.
“It’s OK to be occasionally supported by your team-mate, but you don’t want to use, systematically, ways of adjusting the race just for the sake of the points when your team-mate is scoring in a way that he deserves. This is not the way McLaren want to win, or the way Lando wants to win.
“If I ask Lando, he would say: ‘I am comfortable if in Abu Dhabi [at the end of the season] I miss a few points that I could have got with some actions, but if those actions were not right at the time, then, you know what? We keep strong as a team, the team is stable and cohesive, we will give it a go next year’.”
Prime focus on constructors’ title
In the constructors’ championship, McLaren are just eight points behind Red Bull and could take the lead this weekend. Ferrari are in third place, 31 adrift of McLaren.
Stella emphasised: “We need to be careful that while we focus the conversation and the attention on to the drivers’, we don’t lose sight on the fact that the constructors’ is at least a three-headed quest.”
Stella said this changed approach from McLaren was distinct from the so-called “papaya rules”, a phrase used by Norris’ engineer Will Joseph over the team radio in Italy as a shorthand for the drivers’ rules of engagement with each other on track.
Stella said: “The ‘papaya rules’ only have to do with racing with no risks, no contact between the two McLarens and respectfully. That’s it.
“It’s just a quick way to remind our drivers, ‘Guys, don’t take too much risk in fighting each other’.”