The 2025 Italian Grand Prix was one of the more underwhelming races this season. While we didn’t see much racing action apart from the first two laps, there was some drama inside the McLaren team, which might have set a very dangerous precedent.
During the race, Lando Norris was running in P2 while Piastri was 3 seconds behind in P3. In order to cover Leclerc who had already pitted and closing in on the pit window, the team decided to pit Piastri first in the condition that he would not undercut Norris to keep the racing fair. Piastri’s pit, a sub 2 second stop. But the pit crew had trouble with Norris’ front left tyre, delaying his stop.
This meant that Norris came out of the pits behind his teammate. However, McLaren decided to give Piastri team orders to give back the position. This has set a dangerous precedent for the near future.
McLaren has opened a can of worms
Since the slow pit stop was not Norris’ fault, the team felt that it would be fair to restore the original order of the two drivers. By that logic, Oscar Piastri should have retired from the Dutch Grand Prix after Norris had a technical failure which was not his fault. But this is a more extreme version.
“When we began the pit stop sequence, we pitted Oscar first with the clear intent that we wouldn’t swap positions,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said.
“Unfortunately, that compounded with a slow pit stop.”
“Since the order had been set with Oscar first, and then the delay, we felt the right thing was to return to the positions we had before the stop.”
🚨 | Oscar Piastri talks about the team orders:
Yeah, I mean, you know, there’s clearly valid reasons for swapping back, and you know, Lando qualified ahead, was ahead the whole race, so I get that. There’s just some things we need to discuss.”
[via F1 TV]#F1 #ItalianGP
— Fastest Pitstop (@FastestPitStop) September 7, 2025
Let’s look at this practically. Slow pit stops is a part of racing in Formula 1. The team cannot always execute perfect pit stops all the time. This doesn’t mean that the drivers should not face the consequences. If today, Norris had a slow stop, we could see the same happen to Piastri in the future. If such a scenario happens during the Championship decider, it would not be fair to hand down team orders to either of the drivers.
The problem with the precedent that has been set is, where’s the line? Formula 1 is a sport filled with unexpected hurdles. McLaren can’t just reset the order every time either of their drivers lose position due to a fault not of their own. This opens the door to several possibilities that could result to no racing between the 2 teammates in Formula 1.
From the start of this season, McLaren has been afraid of creating tensions between their 2 drivers. In the first few races, Verstappen was also posing a threat to the Championship every now and then. Although the Dutch driver is still able to pull off a win every now and then, the McLaren drivers have pulled away from the rest of the drivers in the Championship.
McLaren uses the 2024 Hungarian GP example to convince Piastri
While handing down the order to Piastri in Monza, his race engineer brought up the example of the 2024 Hungarian GP, where Norris was asked to give up his position to Piastri as he had undercut his teammate. One of the key differences between last year and this year is that the drivers weren’t fighting each other for the Championship in 2024.
Here’s the radio interaction between Piastri and his race engineer:
Tom Sallard: “This felt a bit like Hungary last year—we pitted in this order for team reasons. Please let Lando pass, and you’re free to race.
Piastri: “We said a slow pit stop was a part of racing. I don’t really get what’s changed here.”
This year, the situation is completely different. Piastri and Norris are the only ones in contention for the Drivers’ Championship. The stakes are higher. If both instances had happened with the drivers fighting for the race lead, it would not have been fair for McLaren to ask Piastri to give up position to his Championship rival.
🚨 | Lando Norris emphasizes that the team orders from McLaren were the fairest thing to do:
“As for the swap with Oscar, that was something we agreed as a team beforehand. If it was the other way around, the same thing would have happened.”
“It’s not what I want—I don’t want…
— Fastest Pitstop (@FastestPitStop) September 7, 2025
Until now, both sides of the garage have been working as one team. But now, McLaren has more or less secured the Constructors’ Championship. It’s time for both drivers to battle for the Drivers’ Championship. Hence, McLaren should probably operate as two separate teams going forward to bring the essence of fighting for a title back to Formula 1.
The Papaya team has often prided itself on having no number one driver. By splitting their garage, they would put their money where their mouth is.
