McLaren 'walking a tightrope' with papaya rules - Wolff

Toto Wolff believes McLaren is "between a rock and a hard place" in its plight over whether to enforce team orders on Oscar Piastri.

The Mercedes team principal has suggested it may have no choice, even if it goes against the wants of the "racing soul", claiming that pragmatism must hold out with championships on the line.

Lando Norris is the Woking squad's best chance at dethroning Max Verstappen in the drivers' title fight but has been hesitant to prioritise the British driver over his team-mate.

At the Italian Grand Prix, papaya rules entered the F1 lexicon as McLaren sought to formalise the expected and appropriate on-track conduct between its drivers.

Wolff, who had to draw up similar expectations between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, feels the team is "walking a tightrope" and risks the situation becoming "dysfunctional" if McLaren does not act soon.

"As a racing team battling at the front, suddenly you're between a rock and a hard place," the Austrian explained to media including RacingNews365.

"Because on one side, they [McLaren] are racers, like we are racers, and we want to make sure that the best man wins.

"On the other side, when it starts to become dysfunctional and impacting your team's performance, how do you react to that?

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

"At the end [of the season] you don't want to lose out on a championship by three or five points that you could have easily made.

"Walking that tightrope is so difficult and there is no universal truth of how to handle it."

Stella and Brown will 'come to some conclusions'

After locking out the front row in qualifying at Monza, Piastri's first-lap lunge on Norris caught the 24-year-old off-guard, dropping him behind eventual race-winner Charles Leclerc, a move that eventually proved to scupper its chances of a one-two finish.

Norris finished third behind Piastri, but the near miss between the pair, and McLaren's lack of invoking team orders, left points on the table in the drivers' standings.

Now, with eight rounds to go, the Briton trails Verstappen by 62 points and if he can continue to reduce the Dutchman's lead at the rate he has, he will usurp him in the Abu Dhabi season finale.

Wolff shared his belief that Andrea Stella and Zak Brown would conclude that now is the time to throw the weight of the team behind Norris - something Stella has since confirmed would happen.

"Andrea [Stella] and Zak [Brown], there is nobody that understands sport as well as they do. They understand it very well," Wolff said.

"Andrea has seen all of that pan out in front of his eyes multiple times at Ferrari. What I see with him is he has that racer's soul that doesn't want to do it and wants to let them race.

"But I think they're going to come to some conclusions, how they're handling this.

"This is when we started to introduce the 'rules of engagement', which we then changed the wording and made it 'racing intent', because 'rules' was too harsh as a word for the drivers."