2016 Formula One champion Nico Rosberg has questioned McLaren Racing’s team orders at Monza, when the team asked Oscar Piastri to hand second position back to Lando Norris after Norris experienced a slow pit stop. While McLaren likely tried to play a fair game, Rosberg suggested that the swap was “not so straight cut.”
The last stage of the race saw Norris chasing race leader Max Verstappen in P2, while his teammate and championship rival Piastri was in P3. When the topic of pitting came up, McLaren agreed to Norris’s request to pit Piastri first, but only on the condition that he would re-emerge in P2 after pitting second.
McLaren acknowledged and called in Piastri first, replacing the mediums on his MCL39 for soft compound tires. His pit stop lasted a staggering 1.9 seconds. However, when Norris was called in on Lap 47, an error led him to remain stationary for a 5.9 seconds, causing him to eventually rejoin the track behind Piastri in third place.
Keeping the British driver’s condition in mind, McLaren intervened by asking Piastri to give back P2 to Norris. Once the swap was done, the team confirmed that both drivers were free to race each other. At the checkered flag, Norris secured P2, and Piastri finished third. While McLaren’s team orders could be seen as fair play, one could think of Norris’s slow pit stop as part of racing and argue that team intervention was unnecessary.
Later in the race, winner Max Verstappen was heard talking to his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, on the team radio about the situation at McLaren. Rosberg said that Verstappen perceived the slow pit stop as part of racing and revealed that the event would prompt internal meetings at McLaren. The Sky Sports F1 reporter said:
“Max had the view of Oscar that pit stop times are part of racing and what comes around, comes around.
“It’s a really difficult one internally and that will require some talks because I don’t think Oscar would have done that. From the outside, you think OK, that’s the only way to do it fair because Lando deserved second place because he did a much better weekend but it’s not so straight cut.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained the team’s stance on the pit stop and the team orders that followed. He said:
“I think that the pit stop situation is not only a matter of fairness, it’s a matter of consistency with our principles. And wherever the championship goes, what’s important is that the championship runs within the principles and the racing values that we have at McLaren and that we have created together with our drivers.
“The situation whereby we swap the drivers is not only related to the pit stop, and this is a big useful that I clarify, it’s also related to the fact that we wanted to sequence the pit stop of the two cars by stopping Oscar first and then Lando. And we had the clear intent that this should have not led to a swap of position.
“It was just done because we were covering Leclerc, and at the same time we were waiting until the last possible moment to see if there had been a red flag or a safety car. So we pursued the team interest and to capitalise as much as possible on this interest, we needed to go first with Oscar, then with Lando, but the clear intent was this is not going to deliver a swap of positions.
“So the fact that we went first with Oscar, compounded by the slow pit stop of Lando, then led to a swap of positions, and we thought it was absolutely the right thing to go back to the situation pre-existing the pit stop and then let the guys race. This is what we did, and this is what we think is in compliance with our principles.”
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