Oscar Piastri is hoping to avoid team orders at McLaren by making a better start to the F1 2025 season, with his muted start to last year allowing Lando Norris to emerge as the team’s priority.

McLaren‘s so-called ‘papaya rules’ emerged as a theme of the second half of the F1 2024 campaign, with the team widely criticised for refusing to implement team orders at the start of the Italian Grand Prix.

Oscar Piastri aiming to avoid Lando Norris support role at McLaren

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Piastri‘s pass on Norris on the opening lap at Monza set up a race-long battle between the McLaren drivers, with the pair ultimately losing out to Charles Leclerc, who took an emotional victory for Ferrari.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella declared ahead of the following race in Azerbaijan that the team would show a “bias” towards Norris for the remainder of the season to support the British driver in his title aspirations against Max Verstappen.

However, the roles were reversed in Baku with Norris helping Piastri see off Leclerc in the fight for victory. Piastri later gifted the win of the Brazilian GP sprint race to Norris before his team-mate returned the favour in Qatar.

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Red Bull driver Verstappen went on to secure a fourth consecutive World Championship with two races to spare in Las Vegas, with Norris ultimately falling short by 63 points.

McLaren came away from last season with their first Constructors’ title in 26 years, with a combined six victories between Norris (four) and Piastri (two) enough to beat Ferrari by 14 points.

With McLaren finishing last year with the fastest car, Norris and Piastri are considered among the favourites to lift the Drivers’ title in F1 2025.

And Piastri believes a strong start to the season is key to his hopes of falling into a support role this year, having been forced to wait until the eighth race in Monaco for his first podium of F1 2024.

He told RN365: “‘You want to earn absolutely everything you can on merit. It [team orders] happened once and it went both ways.

“I think the most important thing for me is to make sure I have a better position in the World Championship standings, which in some ways I am not subject to, because if we were equal in points, it would not have been an issue.

‘I think it’s important for me to put myself in a stronger position initially. That’s probably the biggest lesson I can take from this.

“I think I just need to make sure that I score the points and that I maximise my chances, because that really led to the team orders, so that’s my goal.”

Piastri denied that team orders cast a shadow over McLaren’s season, with both drivers benefiting equally from the use of papaya rules.

The 23-year-old went on to argue that the team are better equipped for a more sustained title challenge in F1 2025, having been accused of spurning a number of potential victories last season.

He explained: “To be honest, I don’t think the papaya rules overshadowed our year.

“There was a lot of discussion externally, but internally it was very clear to us what the intention was.

“The subject is inherently not easy, no matter how you try to package it, but I think it was made much bigger than it ever was.

“In reality, it only came to fruition in the sprint race in Brazil and it actually went the other way in Baku, so I think it was made much bigger than it was.’

“I think there were other moments for the team where we may have lost some points. Some of our races were learning points and sometimes painful learning points.

“But I feel that in the second half of the season we have been much better in terms of strategy and effectively learned to race at the front again. I think that has been very good.

“I always have a voice in these things and I had a voice all the time when we were talking about team orders.

“But again, I think it was much more important for everyone outside the team.”

Piastri’s comments come after Norris described the F1 2025 campaign as “a refresh” with Piastri free to challenge him for wins at the start of the new season.

Norris went on to claim that he had “earned” certain “privileges” by establishing himself as McLaren’s biggest hope in 2024.

Speaking after giving Piastri the win in the Qatar sprint, he told media including PlanetF1.com: “Next year is a refresh and Oscar has an opportunity to fight for a championship too.

“A lot of what you guys write about and talk about has been because of the championship fight, the Drivers’ Championship fight, and that’s where a lot of talk and things started. And I earned my right to have some of those privileges.

I earned my right by doing a good job through the whole season, to be given that opportunity.

“I don’t go around asking for it. And it’s certainly not how I want to win a championship. I want to go out and give Max a fair fight and do my part and earn it my way.

“Sometimes there’s inclusions, which is Oscar helping me on a couple of occasions.

“Everyone spoke like it was going to be every race. We went into Baku and it was actually the opposite way around. I did a little bit there and then Oscar helped me win in Brazil.

“Sadly, things turned for the worse on Sunday and the opportunity was gone, but I’ve repaid it today.

“So I think it’s our strength as a team. I don’t think other teams work this way.

“And it’s definitely a part of why we are where we are as a team now, why we are the top team in Formula 1, and why we’re fighting for the win in the Constructors’.”

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