McLaren isn’t binning its “papaya rules” just because the sport’s reset button has been pressed for 2026. If anything, Zak Brown sounds more convinced than ever that the only way to survive a long season with two front-line drivers is to keep the guardrails up — even if it guarantees another year of noise from the outside.
Speaking after the final day of pre-season testing in Bahrain, the McLaren Racing CEO reiterated that Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will again be allowed to race, but only inside the framework the team laid down last year: the team’s result comes first, and when the moment demands it, McLaren will be “strategic and intelligent”.
Brown’s key point wasn’t that the rules are fixed in stone — it was that McLaren treats them like car development: always being refined, always being assessed, and always reviewed in context rather than turned into a public-facing doctrine.
“We actually talked to the drivers, kind of race by race,” Brown said. “While we do a season review and a season preview, it’s kind of like a racing car: we’re always developing how we go racing on a race by race basis.
“They continue to be free to race again. We will be strategic and intelligent when situations arise, and there won’t be much change because they were free to race last year.”
It’s a neat rebuttal to the idea that “papaya rules” is code for pre-selecting a number one. The phrase has become a lightning rod because of how last season unfolded, when the team’s internal decisions were repeatedly interpreted through the lens of a title fight that tightened, then swung.
Norris ended 2025 world champion by three points over Max Verstappen, despite being more than 30 points behind Piastri after the Dutch Grand Prix. The shift in momentum began at Monza, where Norris lost track position after a slow stop and McLaren subsequently inverted its cars on track. That move — and a handful of other flashpoints later in the year — fed a narrative that Piastri was being managed for the greater good of Norris’ championship bid.
Singapore’s clash management and a Qatar pit call that arguably cost Piastri a win were also held up as evidence by those convinced McLaren had tilted the table. The scrutiny grew loud enough that it spilled beyond the paddock and into Australian politics as the 2025 title story reached its peak.
Brown, though, was blunt about what he thinks of the accusations.
“It can be frustrating when some people – and again, this isn’t country specific – are very uninformed and the statements you see are just ridiculous,” he said. “We just need to keep our head down, stay focused, and the people that matter most to us know that we bring total sporting fairness to our racing team, our papaya fans and our sponsors, family and friends.”
McLaren’s line remains the same: maximise the weekend, don’t litigate the season in real time. The constructors’ championship is the priority because it demands two cars scoring heavily, and that inevitably shapes how a team calls its races when two drivers are fighting for the same piece of track.
And here’s the part that’s often lost in the shouting: “free to race” has never meant “free from consequences”. Teams can let drivers fight and still insist on rules that prevent self-inflicted wounds — especially when points can evaporate in a heartbeat and a single collision can poison a title bid in both championships.
With Norris and Piastri still paired for 2026, McLaren’s challenge isn’t writing a better rulebook. It’s executing it cleanly when the pressure spikes, when one driver feels hard done by, and when every call is instantly framed as either proof of impartiality or confirmation of a conspiracy.
Brown’s confidence suggests McLaren believes it learned enough from last year’s controversies to do it with less mess this time. Whether the paddock — and a very switched-on fanbase — buys that will depend on the first genuinely awkward moment, not what’s said in Bahrain.
