Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri reflect on Lap 1 move in F1 Italian GP, as Andrea Stella share his thoughts on ‘papaya rules’.
Having got a decent start to his race from pole in F1 Italian GP at Monza, it looked like finally Norris would lead a grand prix for the full Lap 1. But it wasn’t to be as teammate Piastri made a bold move at Turn 4, taking the outside like and make it stick.
He braked later and took the corner away from Norris, who had yield eventually which allowed Charles Leclerc to sneak past to second. Although the Brit managed to take the place back via undercut, but the one-stop strategy undone all the work.
The move from Piastri was a bold one to try on his teammate, who is likely to fight for the championship. From the Australian’s side, it was a fair move under the ‘free to race’ game. “I mean, I braked later and got around the outside,” he said. “There wasn’t really much more to it than that. Yeah, you know, we both got through unscathed.
“I knew once I hit the brakes, I kind of got ahead a bit and yeah, I knew I was kind of entitled to stay on the outside. And yeah, ultimately, for 38 laps of that race, it put me in a race-winning position. So yeah, for me, it was just a good first lap,” summed up Piastri, as teammate Norris – who was mellow – but conceded that the Australian did a better job.
He could have braked later himself but didn’t with the mindset to avoid any contact if it were to happen. “[The papaya rule is] just don’t crash, that’s all,” said Norris. “There was no contact, so he did a good job. [I could have] just braked a bit later. Simple as that. But sometimes it’s easier said than done.
“Oscar obviously braked on the limit and gave me space. It was just about enough. I did my best to avoid anything else happening at the time. But at the same time, if I brake two metres later, you don’t know and you can’t predict. But two metres later and it could easily have been a crash. So it’s a tough one.
“Easiest thing is just to brake way later and force him off and I kind of treat it like no one else. I don’t know. I obviously took it easy. I saw we had a massive gap behind, so maybe I was just a bit too much on the cautious side and paid the price,” summed up Norris. Post-race, McLaren chief Zak Brown revealed the ‘papaya rules’ motto.
The message was given to Norris on the radio when he was tucked behind Piastri after performing an undercut on Leclerc. “Race each other respectfully, give each other enough room and don’t touch each other,” said Brown to TV media. “And that’s exactly what they did. [The drivers were told to] just ‘don’t touch’, and they didn’t.
“So it was good, hard racing. That’s what happens when you have two number ones. They want to both win the race and so it was clean. We’re just focussed on getting the best results that we can and we’re doing that every weekend. Lando had his mistake there where he ran a bit long so that kind of put him out of contention, so we let them race to the end.”
Elaborating further, McLaren team principal Stella admitted about reviewing the ‘papaya rules’ and considering that there is real possibility with both the championships, they will consider options to see what can be done differently going forward.
“We will have to review together with the drivers, look at the videos, understand their point of view, and then we will assess together whether they are fully compliant or not,” said Stella to media. “We will take the learning, if there is any learning that we need to take, and then we will adjust the papaya rules such that they allow us to pursue, in the best possible manner, both the Constructor’s Championship and the Drivers’ Championship.
“Because we have to be now in condition to acknowledge that not only the Constructor’s Championship is possible, but even from a driver’s point of view, with the performance we have at the moment in the car and some of the struggle that we see with Red Bull, it is definitely possible. So if we can achieve both as a team, we need to put the team in condition, and Lando in condition, to pursue both championships.”
Stella also clarified that there was no discussion about a swap at the end of the race when it was certain that Leclerc will win. “We did not consider that, we considered other ways during the race to make sure Lando has his own opportunities,” he said. “But we didn’t consider the swap even because we were still willing to put as much pressure as possible on Leclerc and eventually to induce him to have a problem with the front-left like a lock-up in one of the chicanes.”
Here’s the race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-italian-grand-prix-norris-loses-lead-to-oscar-piastri.1808999388731599728
Here’s how F1 Italian GP panned out
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