Jacques Villeneuve believes Oscar Piastri’s contract prevents McLaren from issuing strict team orders, but Karun Chandhok says strategy calls can be used as a way around that.
Acknowledging after Monza that they are in a fight for both championship titles, and that Lando Norris is the better positioned of the team-mates, McLaren are throwing their full support behind the Briton.
Are McLaren blocked from issuing Oscar Piastri ‘strict team orders’?
Norris sits 62 points behind Max Verstappen in the race for the World title with 238 points still in play. Piastri is a further 44 points back in fourth place.
That’s led to McLaren making the call to favour the Briton over his Australian team-mate when possible.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown says McLaren are going “to work a team” to “help Lando” while team boss Andrea Stella had the conversation with Piastri about giving up a victory.
But wanting to enforce team orders could be easier said than done.
According to former F1 driver turned Sky pundit Chandhok, he spoke with Stella about McLaren’s potential team orders and to him it “doesn’t sound like there is a clear order.
“We spoke with Andrea Stella briefly, and I asked the question straight up, ‘if Oscar is leading this race on the final lap and Lando is behind in his slipstream, will you make them swap positions?’
“And he said, ‘No’.
“So still they’re not playing the clear number one, number two.”
McLaren: Papaya rules and team orders
Addressing guest pundit Jacques Villeneuve, Chandhok spoke about the “extreme” era at Ferrari when there was a clear number one and number two driver with Michael Schumacher as the team leader and Eddie Irvine as number two even from the very first race of the championship.
The 1997 World Champion responded: “It was extreme because it was from race one, but it wasn’t his contract. That’s it. When Eddie signed his contract, he knew, so he couldn’t complain about it. And Michael always has the little edge anyway.
“Now, early the first half of the season, Lando had the edge, and sometimes big compared to Piastri, so he deserves to be the one being helped.
“But obviously, Piastri’s contract blocks the team from giving strict team orders. The only thing he cannot do is damage the team, which is the Constructors’ champion, just like what happened in Monza.”
Chandhok pointed out one way in which McLaren could work around Piastri’s contract clause and that’s through strategy, and giving Norris the preferred option.
“But what it sounds like is going to happen though, is they’re going to favour Lando when it comes to strategy,” he explained.
“So for example, here in Baku, historically it’s a one-stop race, so there will be an optimum point of the race to bring the cars into pit and at that stage Lando will get the favourite call. So Oscar will be at a disadvantage at that sort of situation.
“And I think also when you get a 50-50 battle like we had a Monza with a bit of a risky move, I think the fall-out of Monza is now Oscar will be told, ‘You can’t do that anymore, none of these taking risks which could compromise the team result’.”
