Why McLaren’s team orders solution has invited more confusion

Oscar Piastri is willing to give up Formula 1 race victories to Lando Norris. Except, it won’t come to that.

Norris is thankful McLaren is now showing “bias” towards him in the 2024 world championship but doesn’t want to be “given” the title.

The intra-McLaren Monza battle can happen again, but not exactly as it did in Italy.

McLaren’s Baku weekend began exactly how Monza ended: focused on its confusing team orders approach amid Norris’s attempt to overhaul Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the 2024 title battle.

Team boss Andrea Stella explained that from this weekend, McLaren will show “bias” in its “support to Lando”. There was, however, a note of confusion in his statement regarding how the new approach “will be updated after Baku”.

Autosport discovered in the Baku paddock that this meant the current team orders only apply on a case-by-case basis and that they would likely be revoked if Norris were to lose considerable ground to Verstappen at this event.

Autosport understands that the “bias” Stella references also means that when McLaren introduces upgrades to the end of the season, if there is only one set of parts available, it will be added to Norris’s MCL38 first given the points situation.

Norris then clarified Piastri is only expected to move aside “for lower positions”, that, actually his team-mate wouldn’t be pulling over if they ran 1-2, and stated that if Piastri has “fought for a win and he’s deserving of a win, then he deserves to win”.

Specifically, Norris later revealed, “something like Monza, that second or third, where it would have been swapped around”, which means from now on if the orange two cars are line astern and no victory possible, Piastri would indeed hand Norris an extra place.

There were also revealing Norris answers on how McLaren had “resolved”, per his word, Piastri’s attack at the Monza start.

“We had the biggest gap in the world going into the corner,” Norris added of this. “So, I think not ideal in my world, but also for us as a team, that’s not how we should have gone racing there.

“I think clearer instructions of how we can race each other and how much we can risk with one another [have been issued].”

Autosport had heard suggestions that Piastri’s camp wasn’t overly enthused about how Stella’s interview had been released as the Baku media event began, but when asked if he was happy with how the…