McLaren team orders 'in line with their principles,' team boss confirms

08:56, 08 Sep

Updated: 10:57, 08 Sep

byKada Sarkozi

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella explained their decision to swap Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in Monza was in line with McLaren's principles.

Sunday's Grand Prix proved to be a one-stop race in Italy. McLaren opted to extend their first stints, waiting for the race to be neutralized to have a better chance of attacking Max Verstappen in the lead.

After neither a Safety Car nor a red flag arrived, the team decided to pit Piastri first from third place, in order to cover an undercut by Charles Leclerc and Ferrari.

Norris pitted a lap later, however, the McLaren crew made a mistake, relegating the Briton from second to third. The team then decided to tell Piastri to let his teammate past.

"I think that the pit stop situation is not only a matter of fairness, it's a matter of consistency with our principles," Stella began to GPblog after his home Grand Prix.

"However the championship goes, what's important is that it runs within the principles and the racing values that we have at McLaren, 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 useful that I clarified this, 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."

Stella explained that after the anticipated neutralization never materialized, the team’s goal was to maximize the result without allowing Piastri to undercut Norris.

"We had the clear intent that this should have not led to a swap of positions (with Piastri undercutting Norris, ed.).

"We pursued the team interest and to capitalize as much as possible on this interest, we needed to go first with Oscar, then with Lando.

"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."

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella

'McLaren will review the case', Stella says

The team principal explained they will look at the incident after the weekend.

"We will review the case. We will review also the situation where it was a slow pit stop in isolation. We will review our principles in relation to that and reinforce the direction if this is in agreement with our drivers."

However, he also underlined this does not necessarily mean there will be changes moving forward.

"We need to, first of all, agree on what the word review means. Reviewing is the foundation of pursuing excellence.

"If you think that whatever you do is good and you are not going to have an individual or a team review of anything you do, even the thing you do perfectly, simply you're not going to progress.

"So for me, reviewing, it doesn't mean like, ‘oh, certainly we will learn to change it.’

"Potentially, we will review them and we will further align on them and we will confirm them. So the fact that I use this word doesn't mean there will be changes.

"The fact that I use this word means that that's how we approach things at McLaren, and this review, which is so essential in engineering, in operation, does apply as well in the way you go racing with your drivers," the Italian concluded.

In the end, the McLaren drivers crossed the finish line in the order of Norris and Piastri behind Verstappen. This means the Australian has a 31-point lead in the drivers' standings after the Italian GP.

Mercedes CEO and team principal Toto Wolff also saw the Woking-based team setting a precedent in Monza. Read his thoughts here!