McLaren to impose team orders on Piastri in Norris F1 title hunt

McLaren has signalled it is preparing to impose team orders on Oscar Piastri to aid Lando Norris's F1 title bid. 

Heading into the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend, Norris is 62 points behind leader Max Verstappen with 232 points left up for grabs across the final eight rounds. Piastri is 106 behind Verstappen.

After the Italian GP, where Piastri overtook pole-sitter Norris on the opening lap on what turned out to be a poor day for Verstappen who finished sixth, the imposition of team orders on Piastribecame a major talking point - with McLaren's so-called 'papaya rules' being in force.

McLaren committed to a review post-Monza, with the team now confirming that it is all in on Norris's title bid with Piastri set to play the supporting act.

"We [will] bias our support to Lando but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles," team principal Andrea Stella told BBC Sport.

"Our principles are that the team's interest always comes first. We want to be fair to both drivers.

"What we don't want to see anymore 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 come first and these are the situations that above all we need to fix because as a matter of fact, the way we entered the race in Monza left the door open for this situation.

"The conversations [with Oscar] have been very collaborative.

"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 very impressed by the level of team spirit and maturity and collaboration that we found in this period."

Brown explains in further detail

Reflecting on the situation himself, CEO Zak Brown expanded on the position the team would take and how it would actually work in practice. 

"He's 60 plus points behind, so i's a pretty tall order, but we're going to give it everything we've got," he explained on the Dale Jr Download, the podcast of NASCAR icon Dale Earnhardt, Jr. 

'Oscar is going to do everything he can to help [Norris]. I'm fortunate in that I've got two number-one drivers, but Lando is now in a position where he can mathematically see it, and smell it. 

"We're going to work as a team to see what we can do to help Lando, and we're going to kind of do it a race or a time. 

"In two races, if we've closed the gap, we'll keep working as a team, but if, in a couple of races, Max has won a couple, Lando's had a DNF, and it's kind of mathematically over, then we'll go back to letting [Piastri] have a go. 

"We let him go in in Monza, but that didn't work out great for us as a as a team as we entered Turn 4, first and second and came out first and third. That's not what you want as a team for the constructors'. 

"It's one of these things where you've got people on the couch with a beer telling us how to run the team, but its not quite that easy, especially when you got two drivers that are number one drivers.

"You want to do right by both drivers, no driver wants to play a supporting role. But Oscar is going to have a long career, he is going to win a lot of races. 

"He's a future world champion, and he knows where the points are at the moment, that Lando could need some help, and he's prepared to help, because both those guys are sticking around with McLaren for a long time."

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