Team orders in motorsport are nothing new. For most people, me included, they should only be used only when absolutely necessary.
In Formula 1, like in Supercars, when pit stops are a part of every race, and a boom is shared by two team cars, then it’s critical that everyone understands that there will be times when a team must make calls that may potentially disadvantage one team driver over the other. Without individual pit lane stalls (like NASCAR or IndyCar) this is essential.
Moreover, with everything that is at stake in F1 in terms of the financial rewards attached to each team’s season points score, the good of the team is almost always going to take precedence over the good of individual drivers.
And, at the sharp end of F1 (and Supercars), the drivers are all there on merit and are paid by their respective teams to do a job. It’s not F2/F3, or Super2, where a driver will almost always be bringing the budget to the team.
Hence, like any other member of a leading race team in F1, the McLaren drivers are subject to direction from those running their team. And that’s why, in the last third of the Hungarian Grand Prix at the weekend, there was one big loser. That was Lando Norris.
Oscar Piastri rightly won his first GP. He won the start and drove away from his teammate, Norris, easily enough. In the second round of pit stops, the McLaren team was probably overly cautious in pitting Norris before Oscar, but it did so in order to cover any threat from Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen. If Oscar had been brought in first, then the status quo would have been maintained.
Secure your spot today.
It’s inconceivable that the scenario that then developed with Norris undercutting Piastri, purely due to that earlier protective stop, hadn’t been contemplated by McLaren in its preparations for the race. Moreover, Lando would have been all over what was happening as events unfolded. He’s a smart racer.
What then ensued, with a highly transparent public display of petulance on the part of Norris when asked to reverse positions with Oscar, was needlessly damaging to Lando himself and the McLaren team. Instead of fully celebrating a brilliant, and well earned, one-two in the grand prix, the media were, rightly, focused on the seeming reluctance of Norris to do the right thing.
It’s all very well for some members of the fourth estate to proclaim that Lando’s unwillingness to comply with the team instruction to reverse the running order should be seen as proof of the level of selfishness needed to become a world champion.
I don’t buy that. What goes around come around, and Lando would have been much better served to have quickly and quietly complied with the direction from the pit lane wall rather than waiting until almost the bitter end and then lifting off on the pit straight in the manner he did.
After all, the end result was the same. But, apart from giving material to Netflix for the next series of Drive to Survive, no-one gained. Lando was shown to be a poor loser and he undermined the magnitude of his teammate’s first win.
At the end of the day, of course, there has to be a measure of blame laid at the door of McLaren. Apart from the overly cautious stopping of Norris before Piastri, there’s clearly some work to be done internally in terms of respecting team commands by the drivers, or at least with one of them.
If McLaren is truly going to mount an effective attack on Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen, not just this season but ongoing, it needs to have all its ducks in a row. It’ll know that, and I suspect it’ll be all over the issue this week.
With Oscar having Mark Webber in his corner, I feel he’ll be very well advised on how to handle everything. After all, Mark is fully aware of what can happen when team politics turn sour.
Through all this, Piastri won his first grand prix! And that’s a cause for celebration. He’s won races, and championships, all the way up the ladder to F1 and now he’s firmly established himself as a future champion at the pinnacle of the sport.
Congratulations Oscar, and well done not just to him but also to his father, Chris, plus the group of people around him who have given him all the help needed to get to the top of the podium.
It’s worth making a shout out to a little known past member of that group, one Gerald McDornan. Gerald was, for many years, a big part of the Holden media team and he did his bit a few years ago to assist with pushing Oscar’s profile here in Australia as he was winning in the junior formulae in Europe.
Since COVID, Lobsters (as he’s known in some circles) has had more than his fair share of ups and downs, but I know that he’ll have got as big a kick from Sunday’s result as the rest of us watching from the sidelines. Good on you, Gerald.
After waiting years for another GP winner after Alan Jones, it seems Australia has got rather good at it in recent times! In fact, disproportionately so, from a population of 27 million. Hopefully the ticket office for the 2025 Australian GP in Melbourne has been busy this week.
Meanwhile, it was a busy weekend again for motorsport around the globe. I got back home here in time to watch much of it after a glorious, sport-free (and column free), week in the Emerald Isle (the real one, not the one in North Carolina) with family.
“The Supercars action from Sydney Motorsports Park wasn’t bad (and Chaz Mostert plus Matt Payne were both exceptionally good) but didn’t really hold a candle to the NASCAR action from Indianapolis, both Xfinity and Cup. A fourth for SVG was very cool to watch. That oval win is coming.
I must say though that I don’t agree at all with Chaz’s apparent view, expressed at the weekend, that all Supercars races should be long distance refuelling races. With the exception of the Saturday race at Townsville, the best action of the year so far has been from the short, sharp action packed races at the Australian Grand Prix.
For decades, a part of the beauty of the Australian Touring Car Championship has been the mix of event formats rather than the cookie cutter approach of BTCC or DTM, for instance. I’d prefer to see more real sprints, not less, whilst also keeping the endurance races special.
Right now, though, the week belongs to Oscar Piastri. Congratulations again.
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