Since Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri became teammates at McLaren, the Woking-based team has let its drivers race each other. They can do so under what is known as ‘papaya rules’, which means they can fight hard on track, but never touch, like when Piastri fought Norris hard on the opening lap in Monza last season.
However, on occasion, this does go wrong. In Canada, the pair collided, which left Norris retiring from the race. With Norris and Piastri fighting for the world championship, the two drivers will want to fight hard to take the F1 crown. However, Piastri has revealed that this instance was spoken about before the season.
Oscar Piastri plays down ‘Papaya rules’
It was clear early on in the season that McLaren had the best car on the grid. This meant the championship battle was likely to be between their drivers. With this being the case, McLaren still wants their drivers to obey the ‘papaya rules’ to ensure both cars finish the race.
Inter-team battles can lead rivals to clash on the track. McLaren is all too familiar with this, having witnessed Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost’s fierce rivalry in the late 1980s. However, Oscar Piastri says the team expected to be the fastest this year, and how they behave on track was spoken about early on.
Speaking to Autosport, Piastri said: “There’s been a lot more made out about papaya rules than what there actually is. It’s literally one rule which is don’t crash into each other. That’s an unsaid rule in every team.
“We’ve always been open about how we go racing. I think not trying to spring any surprises on us as drivers has been the biggest thing. That’s where things become difficult, when you don’t expect something to happen.
“For me, that’s been a very big strength of ours. We went into this year knowing that if we can improve a little bit on the car that we had from last year, we’ll be fighting for not just the constructor’s championship, but the driver’s championship too. And it will most likely be both of us involved in that.
“So, we addressed it early, spoke about it. We are still going to be learning, there’s still going to be situations we can’t always predict, but we’ve done as good a job as we can to be proactive instead of reactive.”
With just ten races remaining, it will be interesting to see if the McLaren drivers don’t fight each other harder, now that McLaren has virtually won the constructors’ championship. Piastri has nearly collided with Norris twice, in Austria and Hungary, as the battle is starting to heat up.
Who is the favourite to win the championship?
After Max Verstappen’s and Red Bull’s form has dropped off, the fight for the championship is between the McLaren pair. Oscar Piastri leads the standings by nine points from Lando Norris, but it is the Brit who has the momentum.
Norris has won three out of the last four races and has slightly edged his teammate in terms of pace. Norris was fortunate to win the British GP, as Piastri received a penalty that cost him first place. But Norris has mainly had the better of his teammate during the European leg.
With such a small gap in the points, there is little margin for error. Piastri has made a few mistakes so far this season, while Norris’s driving has sometimes been erratic, especially in qualifying. This has cost him points in races like the Bahrain GP and the Saudi Arabia GP. Norris needs to drive clean and handle the pressure to surpass the unflappable Piastri. If he can and continues his momentum, the title race could go down to the wire.
