McLaren’s ‘hold position’ F1 team order to Oscar Piastri explained

Lando Norris says McLaren instructed their drivers to “hold position” in the F1 season-opening Australian Grand Prix to avoid looking like “complete idiots”.

McLaren ran in a 1-2 for the majority of the wet chaotic opening round in Melbourne but Oscar Piastri was told not to overtake Norris when he started to catch up to the back of his teammate as the track began to dry out.

Piastri followed the instruction to hold station but later suffered heartbreak on home soil when he spun off at the final corner with 13 laps to go as a heavy rain shower hit.

The Australian ultimately recovered to finish ninth, while Norris held off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to secure victory and take the lead of the F1 world championship.

“I didn’t really know about it, because they said it to Oscar,” Norris said when asked about McLaren’s team order ahead of this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.

“It was literally for two or three laps as we went through the backmarkers, because of the risky conditions. We would have looked like complete idiots if we attempted to race and we both ended up off the track, or out and didn’t score the result that we should do.

“It was just for a couple of laps that they asked for us to hold position, but he was free to race. We were free to race I think all the way up until that point. It was just a holding position for three laps, and then free to race again.

“That’s all I really knew from that. I’m sure we will talk about it more. We even had a little talk about it this morning but it was just from the team’s interest, not for mine or for Oscar’s.

“It was just a McLaren, we’re first and second, so let’s not do anything silly when we don’t need to. And there was still a lot of opportunity left for Oscar to try and race me.

“It was just stupid to try and force a situation when we were behind backmarkers, with blue flags, if you go off line at that part of the race, you are in the wall.

“It was also a stage of the race when I was still trying to think ‘I need to get these tyres to lap 54’ or whatever it was and I think Oscar was trying to push a bit more to try and get me. It was all comfortable from my side.”

McLaren’s post-race explanation

Norris’s comments align with those from McLaren team principal Andrea Stella after the race in Melbourne.

"We had to go relatively soon through some backmarkers while the cars were close together," Stella explained.

"The conditions on track were still a little tricky with intermediate tyres that were running down a bit in terms of their rubber on and at the same time we were receiving some updates on the weather forecast.

"So, we had the going through the backmarkers and the update on the weather forecast that led us to close for a short period of time the internal racing between our two drivers until we had clarity as to the weather prediction.

“What this meant for how we should have used the tyres and then up until we had closed the matter of overtaking the backmarkers. So once this was completed and the weather was assessed we re-opened the racing."