The real problem behind McLaren’s F1 team orders controversy

McLaren's first 1-2 finish of the 2024 Formula 1 season at the Hungarian Grand Prix was overshadowed by a needless team orders controversy - thanks to Lando Norris taking ages to comply with McLaren's instruction to let Oscar Piastri take victory.

Ben Anderson, Edd Straw and Scott Mitchell-Malm analyse how this unfortunate situation unfolded and unpick the consequences for McLaren and its driver lineup.

00:00 The fight to control Norris
01:44 A bad look for McLaren
02:40 Norris's justification - and realisation
04:00 A questionable strategy explained
06:00 Stella lays down the law
07:20 McLaren HAD to test its faith in Norris
08:30 A vital learning curve
10:20 McLaren's unique problem
11:30 What needs to happen now

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[davelangford]

Oscar and Lando have both been done dirty by McLaren, its embarrassing.

[MistianoPenaldo]

Most controversial 1-2 finish since Multi 21 Seb

[Colonel]

The only radio message McLaren should have sent "Lando, we have given you pit priority to cover off Lewis. We will need to invert the positions if you undercut Piastri and give back the advantage. After that, you are free to race."

[lynettarichters]

Very generous to McLaren here. The 1-2 should have played out without drama but they fumbled it. Strategy screwed Oscar and put Lando in a difficult position, which then also screwed him out of racing Oscar for the win in the final stint. They tainted Oscars first win, their own 1-2 finish and stopped Lando from even having a chance to win himself.

[dancastell]

McLaren could have avoided all of this drama by just pitting Piastri first, therefore retaining the same order and then whoever won would have been on pure pace without any team orders intervention

[dukirps]

McLaren had enough delta over the other cars. They should have pitted Oscar first and let them race. Now both drivers feel icky and everyone looks weak.

[PamelaBarber-rk]

Why is nobody talking about how Lando was robbed of his opportunity to fight piastri? Had he been allowed to decided his own pit, he was already catching piastri and could have possibly passed on track. Lando’s biggest strength is being able to push while somehow keeping tires fresh enough, but he wasn’t allowed to here.

[CarlaBaby-jv]

How do you have three F1 journalists representing the exact same perspective on such a layered, nuanced issue? Is this a dogma.

[mattcarper]

As a McLaren fan, this is not how you do it. I feel bad for both drivers.

[anhk_yt]

I can't believe how light you've been on Mclaren here, 100% their fault rather than the drivers .

There's no world Noris is at fault for being put in a ridiculous situation for no reason

[MattIceburg]

This was 100% on McLaren for undercutting Oscar. You don't put a driver in the lead that believes he is in the fight for the drivers championship, realistic or not, and expect them to take team orders easily. I don't even know if I can blame Lando for making it so public because most of the radio messages were coming from the engineer and Lando just being quiet and he's done quite well with the questions afterward from what I've seen. I'm glad he eventually gave the place back but he should have never been put in that position in the first place. Sure, everyone in this situation can learn and come out of better for it with no tangible penalty but I hate that this put a bit of a damper on Oscar's first win.

[UnsounderGnome]

I think this could have been avoided with better communication to Lando before the stop. Something like: "Hey Lando, we want to bring you in first to protect you from Max. It is possible you may undercut Oscar from this. If that happens, we want you to give the position back." Now Lando knows the team's plan and understrands he is getting a benefit and then will be payting that back to Oscar ahead of time, rather then having to be guilted into it afterwards in a really embarrassing way.

[davidpate]

A 1-2 and yet a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Well done, McLaren.

[lukew]

Two takeaways from this are that McLaren are still too inept to be in a title fight and I fear that Lando doesn't have the ruthlessness necessary to ever become a champion.

[ronmac]

Never ever should they make the fastest car & driver give up a win.

[gamergod]

you can really tell that Andrea Stella used to work for Ferrari. absolute clownery.

[mavgr]

Imagine Lando losing the championship by 1 to 6 points. This would be wild..

[SeraPPeach]

I wonder how different this race would have been if Lando had just given the position over immediately and then proceeded to pass Oscar since Lando had much more pace on the last stint.

[Nexta]

You could look at it as Norris questioning what is best for the team, not what he was being told to do.

The fact that McLaren think that it's not best for the team to push the driver best positioned to win the championship to win is mind blowing

[WouldWorkforWoodWork]

it was hilarious to see the team radio keep popping up. What are they going to tell him next?
"Lando, your mum just called, can you stop by right now and ring her back?"
"Lando, they just changed the direction of the race track in the section your on. You need to do a couple of loops to get back in the right direction."
"Lando, if you don't slow down, all the cake will be thrown out for all the children here. Do you want to disappoint ALL the children?

Can you imagine if Lando loses the championship by 24 points?