McLaren will review the way the Italian Grand Prix panned out and consider team orders after recent race weekends showed Lando Norris to have a realistic chance of winning the drivers’ championship.
Norris started from pole position at Monza but was overtaken around the outside under braking for the second chicane by teammate Oscar Piastri on the opening lap, with Piastri going on to lead much of the race. But a one-stop strategy from Charles Leclerc helped Ferrari take victory ahead of Piastri and Norris, who is now 62 points behind Max Verstappen, and team principal Andrea Stella says McLaren will now analyze how to potentially enforce team orders.
“We will have to review together with the drivers, with the videos, understand their point of view and then we will assess together whether they were fully compliant [with pre-race instructions] or not,” Stella said.
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“We will take the learning, if there is any learning they need to take, and then we will apply the papaya rules such that they allow us to pursue in the best possible manner both the constructors’ championship and the drivers’ championship.
“Because we have to now be in the condition to acknowledge that not only the constructors’ championship is possible but even from the driver’s point of view, with the performance that we have in the car and some of the struggles we see with Red Bull, it is definitely possible.
“So if we can achieve both as a team, if we are going to achieve both, we need to put the team in condition and Lando in condition to win both championships.”
Although McLaren did not consider swapping the drivers in the final part of the race, when Piastri ran second and Norris third, Stella said the drivers’ championship picture has been discussed previously.
“In our conversation before the race here, we acknowledged that Lando is in the best position from a drivers’ championship point of view,” he said. “We have conversations with Oscar, we have conversations with Lando and we have conversations together, and that defines our rules of engagement.
“We need to take a look at the first lap, but it has to be done in a way that is competent, detailed, specific, takes into account the videos, what was the drivers’ expectations and then see what we can learn from this situation to adjust future situations, save the fact that we do want to give it a go at the championship with Lando.”
While Stella believes there was only an outside chance of McLaren being able to win on Sunday with a one-stop strategy, he said that losing out to Ferrari has a positive aspect in that so many drivers are in a position to take points from Verstappen in the remaining eight races.
“I want to capitalize more on the competitiveness of the car,” he said. “In terms of the race, I think there maybe a misunderstanding that the McLaren was by far the fastest car. I think Leclerc was as fast as McLaren because he could stay with Oscar in the first stint, and normally when you have the dirty air and you can stay with the race leader, you are at least as fast as the race leader.
“This normally leads to some degradation, like Leclerc had in the final bit of the first stint. And even in the second stint he was behind two McLarens and still he could stay with the McLarens. If you look at the practice and the qualifying, I think lap times were essentially within the noise of putting together laps.
“So I think Ferrari this weekend were as competitive as us, at least with Leclerc, which for us is somehow bad news because it meant we couldn’t simply cruise in the race and we needed to deal with them, and they did a good job at exploiting some of their strengths.
“But at the same time it’s good news because we have more cars that can take points away from Red Bull. So actually I think this is better news for us, and we need to make sure we maximize the potential that is available in the car, even if it means that at these kind of circuits Ferrari will set a very serious challenge for the victory.”