Monza puts McLaren’s ‘values’ under the spotlight as Piastri yields to Norris
McLaren left Monza with a double podium and a double headache: happy with the points, braced for the noise. Oscar Piastri handed second place back to Lando Norris on the final lap after a pit-stop shuffle flipped their order, and the team’s insistence it was simply restoring “principles” has set the title fight on a knife edge.
Max Verstappen did what Max Verstappen does — controlled the Italian Grand Prix to bank his third win of 2025 — ending McLaren’s victory run that stretched back to Montreal in June. Behind him, McLaren’s day turned political. The papaya cars split their strategies late, with the team calling Piastri in first on Lap 45 despite Norris running ahead on track. The move, McLaren say, was driven by cover for Charles Leclerc and a wait-and-see for any last-minute Safety Car.
Then came the sting: Norris’s stop was slow. Piastri jumped him. With the podium order suddenly rewritten by the pit lane, McLaren asked Piastri to give the place back. He did, easing off on the main straight to let Norris through for P2.
Zak Brown went straight to the point afterward, applauding both drivers for taking one on the chin for the greater good. “Great teamwork and respect from Lando & Oscar secures another double podium and valuable points,” the McLaren CEO wrote, already pivoting to Baku.
It’s neat PR, but the stakes are not. Norris trimmed three points from Piastri’s championship lead — it’s now 31 with eight races to go — and plenty argued McLaren had interfered with a title fight they’ve dominated as a team but not resolved as a pairing.
Team principal Andrea Stella pushed back on the idea this was choreography gone wrong. His version: the call to stop Piastri first was never intended to create a swap; it was about protecting the team’s race against Ferrari and leaving room for late-race chaos that never arrived. When Norris’s slow stop “compounded” that plan and accidentally flipped the order, McLaren felt obliged to set the cars back to how they were before the stops and then let them race — except there weren’t enough laps left to do much more than a clean position handover.
“We pursued the team interest,” is the gist of Stella’s explanation. In other words, McLaren believe they can’t allow their own pit stop error to dictate which of their drivers banks the bigger haul, not when the constructors’ crown — a second on the bounce — is the north star. The team will review the slow stop in isolation this week and, Stella says, reinforce the policy with both drivers.
Whether you buy it depends on how you think a modern title fight should be run. McLaren’s internal “rulebook” has been remarkably tidy this season compared to most teams when the stakes rise. But Sunday’s optics cut both ways: a self-inflicted issue created a moral obligation to unwind it, which in turn created the impression of management picking a winner in a straight fight. It’s F1 — nobody was ever going to be satisfied.
From the outside, Toto Wolff didn’t miss the chance to poke the bear. The Mercedes boss warned McLaren may have set a precedent that will be hard to reverse. If another team error swings track position later in the year, does the swap come again? And if it doesn’t, how do you explain that to two drivers separated by a handful of points and a shared dream?
There’s a pragmatic view here. McLaren have made a habit of taking the risk-free route when it comes to securing maximum Sunday totals, and they’ve reaped the rewards. The Verstappen threat hasn’t vanished — Monza was a reminder — and Ferrari keep lurking for scraps. You could forgive McLaren for protecting the baseline and dealing with the driver politics behind closed doors.
But politics don’t stay closed for long when you’re fighting on two fronts. Piastri, as ever, played the team game in the moment; Norris, as ever, didn’t need to be asked twice to bank free points. The temperature will rise from here. Eight races is an eternity when the gap is 31, and Baku’s long straights have a habit of exposing both drag levels and fragile truces.
So McLaren leave Italy with P2, P3 and peace in public. The real story is whether “principles” will still read the same way when the calendar hits the final flyaways and one slow wheel nut — or one overcut — threatens to decide a championship. Sunday felt like a line in the sand. We’ll find out soon enough if it was also a line in the rulebook.
