Will McLaren implement team orders for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri? Zak Brown shares update

McLaren team boss Zak Brown talked about how his team will manage Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in the coming races as the title battle intensifies. The British team is a few steps behind reigning world champions Red Bull. On the other hand, Norris is also chasing three-time world champion Max Verstappen for the driver's title.

On several occasions this year, McLaren made some questionable decisions in terms of driver positions and pitstops during a race that cost them race wins and a chance for Norris to further close the gap to Verstappen in the championship.

Most recently, at the Italian GP, we saw the 'papaya rules' in place, which were the team's way to order drivers to fight for positions, but cleanly, knowing that they are teammates. However, Piastri's Lap 1 overtake against Norris was quite nerve-wracking for the team and neither of them could win the race at Monza.

Speaking on former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr's podcast, Zak Brown hinted at how McLaren would implement team orders in the future. He initially said that since Lando Norris can now see the driver's title inching closer towards him, the team and Oscar Piastri would try to help him in whatever way possible.

Brown also mentioned that he was lucky to have two number-one drivers on his roster.

"We're going to give it everything we've got. Oscar is going to do everything he can to help. You know, I'm fortunate, I got two number one drivers, they're both awesome, but Lando is now in a position where, you know, he can mathematically see it, smell it. So we're gonna work as a team to see what we can do to help Lando," Brown explained at 42:47

He added that if Norris continues to close the gap to Max Verstappen in the next two races, the team will continue to help him. However, if the points gap increases massively between them, then the team will let Verstappen go in future races.

"We are going to do it a race at a time, you know, if two races we have closed the gap, we will keep working as a team. If in a couple of races Max has won and Lando got a DNF, then you know, we will go back to letting him go," he added.

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McLaren honcho explains the 'papaya rules' used in the 2024 F1 Italian GP

McLaren team boss Zak Brown explained what the papaya rules were after former F1 driver Nico Rosberg pressed the team's CEO about them on a Sky Sports broadcast. At the Italian GP on Lap 24, Lando Norris was given the freedom to race against Oscar Piastri. This was said by Norris' race engineer upon which he brought up 'papaya rules'.

After the race ended, Brown explained that papaya rules were in place to allow racing between two teammates but make sure that they remember that both were in the same team and allies at times. He further added that though both drivers complied with its conditions, the Lap 1 tussle between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri was dangerous as both came extremely close to crashing.

"Papaya rules, it's your teammate, race him hard, race him clean, don't touch, that happened. It was an aggressive pass so that's a conversation that we'll have. It was a bit nerve-wracking on pit wall but it's really just respect your teammate." McLaren CEO said (as quoted by F1.com)

In the Italian GP, Oscar Piastri finished P2 while Lando Norris was right behind him in P3. It was Ferrari's Charles Leclerc who won the race at Monza for the second time in his career.