Toto Wolff: McLaren should consider team orders in favour of Lando Norris

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has suggested the time has come for McLaren to make a difficult call on implementing team orders as the F1 title fight draws closer to its conclusion.

McLaren appeared to have the perfect opportunity to capitalise on a poor weekend for Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by locking out the front row of the Italian Grand Prix grid, but polesitter Lando Norris went from first to third on the first lap after a squabble with teammate Oscar Piastri.

Piastri swept by his teammate with an audacious move around the outside of the Della Roggia chicane, before Norris lost another position to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc at the following corner.

Norris ended up finishing third behind Piastri and Leclerc and cut Verstappen’s advantage in the drivers’ championship down to 62 points with eight races remaining after the Dutchman could only finish sixth.

“I think as a racing team that is battling at the front suddenly, you are between a rock and a hard place because on one side they are racers like we are racers,” Wolff said when asked if he was surprised that McLaren allowed their drivers to race.

“We want to make sure that the best man wins but on the other side when it starts to become dysfunctional and impacting your team’s performance, then how do you react to that?

“The team is always on the losing end because if you freeze positions and start to have team orders, then you have maybe not what our racing soul wants to do, but the rational side needs to prevail.

“At the end you don’t want to lose out on a championship by three or five points that you could have easily made. So walking that tightrope is so difficult and there is no universal truth of how to handle it.”

Wolff said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella may have to review their ‘Papaya Rules’ and move away from his “racers’ soul” approach.

“I mean Andrea [Stella] and Zak [Brown], there is nobody that understands sport more than They do. Andrea has seen it all of that pan out in front of his eyes multiple times at Ferrari,” Wolff added.

“He has that racers’ soul that doesn’t want to do it and wants to let them race but I think they are going to come to some conclusion after this race... how are we handling this?

“This is when we started to introduce the rules of engagement and then we changed the wording to racing intent because ‘rules’ was too harsh as a word for the drivers.”