In a bid to be as fair as possible with its two drivers, McLaren nearly squandered the 2025 drivers’ championship to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
There were multiple incidents across the year that raised questions about fairness and how McLaren treated its drivers, given neither was being given priority.
Often cited was the team’s so-called ‘Papaya Rules’ that first came to the fore in 2024.
It is essentially a catch-all term McLaren adopted to remind its drivers not to crash into each other and race fairly, though it came to be used in the broader picture of their title battle.
It became something of a sore point for McLaren last year – and even though Norris suggested there were “no Papaya Rules anymore”, the catchphrase remains.
Ahead of the new season, McLaren team principal Andre Stella said the team would “reaffirm” its commitment to the fundamentals of Papaya Rules.
“Like anything that we approach at McLaren, we go through a thorough process of review such that we can see where the opportunities are to improve,” said Stella.
“This was the same for what we call the racing principles and the way we go racing and internal competition.
“We got quite a lot of feedback already during the season last year. We had conversations after the season, and we are having conversations pretty much as we speak now.
“All this has led us to reaffirm fundamentally that the concepts of fairness, integrity, equal opportunities, sportsmanship — they are all fundamental for the team, for Lando and for Oscar.
“They are reaffirmed. They are confirmed and consolidated, if anything.”
Speaking at the team’s season launch, Piastri backed Stella’s view, noting that there had been some “headaches” caused in 2025.
“Yeah, it will look different,” said Piastri.
“For me, as Andrea said, streamlining is a wise decision to make. We probably caused some headaches for ourselves that we didn’t need to at points last year.
“I think as a general principle and a general kind of way of going racing, it does bring a lot of positives with it. It’s just how do we refine that to try and keep it to just positives, basically.
“There is always a lot more made out about it than actually happens, and there are a lot of hypothetical situations and a lot of people that kind of think without knowing the complete inner workings. A lot of things appear differently to how they actually are.
“Some tweaks for sure this year, but I think it’s pretty clear that we still want to go racing as much as a team as we can.”
The Australian led the lion’s share of the season, only to fade with five rounds remaining.
Piastri never regained the points lead after losing it in Mexico City, and wound up third behind Verstappen.
The Australian said he learned a lot from his third season in F1, even if they were brutal lessons.
“Some of them were nice lessons to learn, some of them were tougher lessons to learn,” said Piastri.
“In terms of performance and the peaks that I had last year, was, firstly, a nice confidence boost and kind of statement for myself that when I get things right and maximise my potential, that I can be a very strong competitor.
“Some of the lessons, in the back half of the year especially were very different in nature.
“Probably a couple of things in Austin and Mexico from a technical point of view and more of a driving point of view that, let’s say, I hadn’t been challenged on earlier in the season. That was probably one lesson to take forward from that.
“Then obviously there was a pretty long string of races where it was pretty eventful for lots of different reasons and I think just taking the lessons out of that and how I can manage those things better, how we as a team can manage those things better.
“That’s probably one of the most important lessons from last year for me, and I feel like I’ve done a lot of good work to try and learn from that, I think the team has as well.
“We’ll make some tweaks, some changes to how we go about things from every aspect.
“Obviously the main one you’re probably thinking about is how we race each other and how we go racing, but even just from a performance standpoint, a time management standpoint, I think there are a lot of lessons in various areas.
“Just constantly evolving and not staying still, I think is probably one of the other big lessons from last year.”
The pre-Papaya Rules McLaren order that still resonates today
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