Toto Wolff dissects decision by McLaren in F1 Italian GP, as he ponders on what will happen next, while Jonathan Wheatley adds his view.
It was all going normal in F1 Italian GP at Monza until the final few laps when a pit error for Lando Norris led McLaren to issue team orders to Oscar Piastri. The Australian was asked to give back second to the Brit after he passed him, while the latter was stuck in pits for longer than he wanted to.
It started few laps earlier when Norris let go of pitting first being the lead car on track. He wanted to utilise any chance of a safety car. Piastri was reluctant but gave up and noted it to be fair decision, even though he felt there are discussions needed to understand things.
Everyone was surprised by what happened, as McLaren stressed on team ethos and principal for the decision. Mercedes chief Wolff, who has had to handle teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg going at each other, was equally surprised to see how it was handled.
He is waiting to see how it pans out later in the season when things get fierce between the two drivers. He noted that Hamilton and Rosberg were two alpha animals in their day, which he cannot see with Norris and Piastri, who are fighting for their first F1 world championship glory.
“Super interesting question,” said Wolff to media. “There is no right and there is no wrong, and I’m curious to see how it plans out, to set the precedent which is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake and there is not a pit-stop to switch them around, but then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver trying to catch up lose the points is not fair either.
“So I think we are going to get our response on whether it was right towards the end of the season, when it heats up. If I look at our situations [with Hamilton and Rosberg], because I am not in the shoes of McLaren, back in the day, with the kind of gap where the constructors’ championship is guaranteed, you just let them race, but within the rules: ‘You race fair and square and you don’t touch. If you touch, then we will take control’, that’s what I would have done better in 2016 than trying to over-manage with our racing intent.
“I think we had two different animals in the car – Lewis and Nico. They were two assassins – assassin’s not the right word. There were two fierce combatants that took no prisoners, racing against each other. At times, very difficult to manage for the team. I don’t see that at McLaren…it’s a bit corporate. I think, first of all, where it was difficult for us in 2016, they were there for a long time.
“Lewis was a World Champion. And it was two lions in the car that went at each other’s throats. That’s very different today,” summed up Wolff, who elaborated that there was no clear cut answer to what they saw. He reiterated on the precedent aspect and feels things will be difficult to manage when a similar – yet different – situation arises later in the season.
“I think there’s no clear cut answer for what happened in Monza,” continued Wolff. “The answer is me managing it that way is going to come towards the end of the season. It is going to get more fierce. If the team made a mistake, the team inverted positions, an absolutely fair decision. On the other side, what is a team mistake? What if next time around the car doesn’t start up and you lose a position or whatever, or the suspension breaks? What do you do then in the next one?
“So, you could have a cascade of events or precedents that can be very difficult to manage. But I can only speak of how we found ourselves in this situation back [in] all those years that we had to manage. And I think most important is to have a clear strategy. You either go like this or you go the other way around. Either let them race or try to balance it in the most possible fair way bearing in mind that it will bite in the end.
“Looking back, we had a race in Budapest, between Valtteri and Lewis, so Valtteri couldn’t get past Raikkonen who was still lead in the front, we said we will invert the cars in the end. So Valtteri was ten seconds behind Lewis to start breathing down his neck and was still involved in it because that’s what we agreed before the race, so you have to define whatever path you choose – and it’s a luxury problem. They can’t lose those championships anymore,” summed up Wolff.
Sauber chief Wheatley feels that McLaren held conservations about such scenarios in their debrief, which is why it was easier to handle and come to a conclusion than going back and forth with it. He is impressed by how the F1 team has managed the championship fight.
“I think that would have… I don’t know because I’m not in that team, but they would have obviously talked about how they were going to go about racing and I guess they had a conversation that if there was a team error that swapped positions, I assume this wasn’t a surprise because there didn’t seem to be much radio traffic about it,” said Wheatley to media.
“I think they obviously learned a lot of hard lessons last year. I’ve been very impressed with how they’ve managed the two drivers fighting the championship this year and I think they were ahead of it. They weren’t having a discussion in the race. It was clearly something they talked about before.”
Here’s McLaren trio on F1 Italian GP
