McLaren have explained what they meant by their repeated references to “papaya rules” in their radio messages to Lando Norris during the Italian Grand Prix.
The message was played twice on the world television feed during the race. Following his first pit stop, Norris’ race engineer Will Joseph told him: “Lando it’s likely we will have to cover for the other car. It will be papaya rules.”
Later, when Norris was gaining on Piastri, Joseph told him: “You are allowed to race Oscar. Papaya rules.”
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said the phrase was a reminder of the rules of racing for their two drivers: “Race each other respectfully, give each other enough room and don’t touch each other,” he said. “And that’s exactly what they did.”
The pair came close to colliding on the first lap of the race, when Piastri passed Norris on the outside of the Roggia chicane. Charles Leclerc pounced on Norris at the exit of the corner and passed the McLaren driver for second place, then went on to win.
Brown said his drivers were told “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.”
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Although Norris is McLaren’s leading driver in the championship, the team has so far refused to impose any orders on the pair of them. Brown suggested they might have handled the end of the race differently had Norris not gone off at one stage and fallen further behind Piastri.
“We’re just focussed on getting the best results that we can and we’re doing that every weekend,” he said. “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.”
Although Piastri led the opening stages of the race, Leclerc beat him to victory by pitting just once while the McLarens came in twice. McLaren “were discussing it but we felt it was best not to try,” Brown confirmed.
“They did, and I think they had nothing to lose in trying that strategy because the worst that would happen would be P3. But it worked for them and hats off, and it’s always kind of nice to see a Ferrari win in Monza.”
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2024 Italian Grand Prix
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