Does McLaren’s Australian GP team order herald a Norris/Piastri F1 title fight?

Team orders issued during Formula 1 races are universally loathed. Even at the squads that opt to deliver them.

In the years of the modern era when they were officially banned (2002-2010), “Fernando. Is. Faster. Than. You.” from then Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley to Scuderia star Felipe Massa summed up the awkwardness of the act.

It was, after all, delivered to a driver leading the German Grand Prix a year to the day since his near-death in Hungary…

But even now that they can be stated openly, it’s barely any more pleasant for the teams.
Money and technology matter so much in this sphere – it’s why the absurd spectacle of coded team orders was alleviated, because it’s still up to a team how it achieves the precious results it needs to survive. But they’re staffed by people who are sporting competitors to their carbon-fibre core.

And at grand old McLaren – the team that let Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost duke it out – team orders continue to be a topic. And not one the squad relishes being discussed.

But McLaren is nevertheless happy to front up to the awkwardness. Because it, more than any of the leading teams, signed up to exactly this situation in pairing Lando Norris with Oscar Piastri. Having two incredible – and incredibly closely matched – drivers is a good problem to have on the whole.

That is to McLaren’s credit. They’re playing a different game from, for instance, Red Bull. There, fielding a second driver unlikely to unsettle good ship Max Verstappen is a key choice Christian Horner and co embrace.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Andrea Stella, McLaren

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

After everything that played out last year, turbocharged with the expectation that it would be the 2025 favorite, McLaren spent the off-season fielding inevitable questions about its team orders plan – then framed as a ‘rules of engagement’ discussion. And it had its answers.

Team principal Andrea Stella reiterated, “our fundamentals are based on the racing principles that we already used last year”. Norris explained, “there’s just responsibility on myself, on Oscar, Andrea, the teams around both of us as drivers, to handle these situations correctly”, while Piastri added, “as long as we’re not taking points off the team then that’s how we’re going to go racing”.

Then, immediately in round one of the new campaign and in front of Piastri’s home crowd, McLaren unleashed the theoretical team orders discussion into F1’s 2025 reality.

On lap 29 of 57 last Sunday, Piastri was told, “hold position please, hold position, transition to the dry, clear the backmarkers”, after he’d erased his team-mate’s hard won lead, initially ahead of Verstappen.

Norris was informed at the same time: “Don’t worry about Oscar for now, we’re going to clear backmarkers and make the transition.” Afterwards, Piastri made his point: “OK. I’m faster, but OK.”

Then, once the traffic had been cleared and on lap 30, Piastri asked, “Are we still holding now?” and was informed the order held. Two laps later, with the results of Piastri’s strong chase to Norris’s rear impacting his left-front tyre, his pace, and with the gap growing again, he was told, “We’re free to race now, free to race, you know the rules…”

Post-race, where his once close chase of eventual winner Norris had ultimately fizzled out in his grass-churning spins later in the race, Piastri indicated he accepted what’d happened.

Team orders were designed to keep the McLarens ahead of the rest

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

“Today’s race and the circumstances were pretty extreme,” he said. “We were approaching backmarkers, [with] one dry line, not knowing if there was going to be rain to come. I’ll speak to the team and try and understand better what the thinking was, but I think it’s always clear that those kind of calls can come in either direction.”

The timing of the order was clearly critical in Piastri’s acceptance – although his classically understated radio responses to the orders suggested that he didn’t like it.

But he recognised what was going through McLaren’s hive mind at this exact point: that the switch to slicks was the only thing that could derail the 1-2 it had nailed on when Verstappen’s first set of inters cried enough, the Dutchman slid deep and Piastri got back ahead.

The Melbourne skies meant a further curveball later arrived – cruel as that development was to be for the home hero.

But Piastri’s words above suggest what happened last Sunday is consistent with McLaren’s overall approach to team orders, which he buys into. The team’s success comes first and once that is as secure as it can be, the drivers can compete for their personal glory.

Of course, the 2025 season remains very young. But it will be clear again to Piastri that he ultimately needs to make sure he’s the lead MCL39 as much as possible to ensure that such calls go his way next time.

McLaren has surely given him confidence this will indeed happen, with Stella praising how “you don’t have to do much of the psychological exercises of convincing him not to get too upset with himself or with the situation”.

“Because he is one of the mentally strongest drivers that I’ve ever met,” Stella added. “So, I’m sure in China he will be back and very soon he will have important results.”

Piastri’s celebration was a little more muted than Norris’s

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

As awkward as it can be for those involved and around F1 fan aversion to team orders, McLaren was right to do what it did in Melbourne. It secured what it had to at that stage – and the emotion of past events has to be ignored in the moment, even if many outsiders think back to Hungary, Monza, Brazil and Qatar last year at the same time.

Getting similar or even more complex subsequent calls right will surely get harder for McLaren depending on how the season develops.

If it ends up 2024-like – with one driver locked in a long battle for the title (most likely with the ever-threatening Verstappen) and the other more distant but still mathematically in play – things will surely get tricky again.

But if 2025 quickly becomes a two-horse race, that’s in a sense much more straightforward.
McLaren will just need to prioritise its constructors’ needs before trusting its drivers not to crash. This is a process made much easier with a dominant car. On the little data available so far, the MCL39 is looking very good in this regard.

This topic surely, then, will keep coming up for McLaren. But given it chimed with exactly what the squad and its drivers were saying before and after, its first team orders episode of 2025 should go down as success, not a saga.

McLaren let Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost race: this is Imola 1989.

Photo by: Motorsport Images