Was McLaren’s comparison of Italy 2025 to Hungary 2024 in team orders clarification accurate?

Almost two weeks on from McLaren’s decision to ask Oscar Piastri to wave Lando Norris through in Monza, following the Briton’s slow pitstop in the closing stages of the race, both drivers have now had the benefit of various debriefs and debates about the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix’s chain of events.

Let’s recap, for anyone who’s been living under a rock: Norris and Piastri were running second and third at Monza. Piastri was given pitstop priority, largely to cover off Charles Leclerc. While Leclerc was almost 30s behind Piastri, the Monegasque was closing down Piastri in the previous laps; once Piastri stopped, he was just four seconds clear of the Ferrari.

Norris then stopped a lap later, endured a delay in changing his front-left tyre, and fell behind Piastri. McLaren chose to restore the order to what it was prior to the stops, although Piastri offered some resistance having felt that slow stops were a part of racing.

In the prelude to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Piastri stood by that comment from a general point of view, but was unaware of the mitigating circumstances with regards to the pitstop order.

“A decision we’ve made is that a slow pitstop is a part of racing,” he said. “Obviously in the car, at the time the context wasn’t there about kind of what else happened in terms of the pitstop sequencing. It was decided that there was another factor for the reason in swapping, so every situation is going to look a bit different.”

Norris felt that it was a very similar situation to McLaren’s decision to swap in last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix. There, Norris was leading and was incredibly reluctant to swap with Piastri, but eventually conceded to let his team-mate through for a maiden grand prix win.

“I think there’s a lot less [times McLaren had to intervene] than you think. This was one of the first in quite a long time. And like I just said, it wasn’t the fact I had a slow pitstop which was the reasoning – it was more the fact of the changing of positions, the sequencing of things,” Norris explained.

“Which was the same as, I know a very different time, but the same as Hungary last year. That was actually more the reasoning of it combined with the pitstop which then made the decision.

“They try and keep things fair between us. But there’s not been many things where they’ve had to actually get involved and do anything to help one or the other.”

In that Hungary race, Norris lost the lead from pole as Piastri got the better start – and was then helped by Norris getting boxed in by Max Verstappen at the first corner. Although the status quo between the McLaren drivers was preserved through the first stop, Norris got the pit priority among the second stops.

This was contextualised by the need to cover off the threat of an undercut from Lewis Hamilton, as the Mercedes driver was showing good pace on fresh rubber. Norris stayed ahead, and lit the touch paper on his new tyres to throw in a strong brace of out-laps.

Piastri stopped two laps later and, much to McLaren’s surprise, Norris gathered the undercut to move in front. Perhaps it had always been McLaren’s intention to protect second and then switch if needed, but Norris was very much of the opinion that he’d earned the chance to be in front.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team, 1st position, Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, 2nd position, celebrate on arrival in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

After much in the way of pleading from race engineer Will Joseph, Norris conceded the place and allowed Piastri to go through.

When you consider the context of the pitstop order, in covering off the chance that an undercut could take place, the two incidents look very similar indeed. In Monza, the slow stop for Norris demonstrates that, had the order been reversed, Piastri might have suffered a parallel fate and ended up falling behind Leclerc. In that instance, however, Ferrari was not liable to let Piastri back through.

Even removing the context of the slow stop, it is fair to compare the two situations. Although neither driver will have liked to move over, and fans won’t have liked to see drivers being forced to swap around, it nonetheless beats the alternative in McLaren’s view. It’s preferable to have a 1-2, or in Monza’s case, a 2-3 locked in first, rather than stick to the usual tenets of pitstop priority and risk losing a place.

And if Piastri was in Norris’ shoes, and had to make a concession for the lead? “I don’t know. I wasn’t in that scenario. Would it have made it a bit more difficult? Probably, yes. But I don’t know if the outcome would have been different. I’m not planning on finding myself in that position.”