Former McLaren and Alpine design engineer Mark Lane says Lando Norris has thrown his “toys” out of the pram as his F1 2025 battle with teammate Oscar Piastri intensifies.
It comes after Norris declared that “there are no papaya rules” anymore after McLaren imposed team orders on its drivers at last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.
Former McLaren man reacts to Lando Norris’s papaya rules claim
McLaren missed out on victory for the first time since June’s Canadian Grand Prix as Max Verstappen, the reigning four-time World Champion, collected his third win of the F1 2025 season for Red Bull.
Norris and Piastri were forced to settle for second and third respectively in a race defined by a late team orders drama at McLaren.
McLaren parted from standard procedure by pitting Piastri first despite the Australian trailing his teammate on track at the time.
Norris pitted a lap later, but a slow stop saw him fall behind Piastri when he rejoined the track.
McLaren instructed Piastri to return second place to Norris, with the cars swapping positions on the pit straight in the closing laps.
The result means Norris has reduced Piastri’s lead in the standings to 31 points with eight races remaining.
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McLaren famously deployed its ‘papaya rules’ – effectively a code of conduct between Norris and Piastri in wheel-to-wheel scenarios – in the closing months of the 2024 season.
In an update after the Italian Grand Prix, however, Norris claimed that the papaya rules never existed.
He told DAZN: “There are no papaya rules anymore. We’ve never had them.”
Asked if that document exists under a different name, he replied: “Yes. It’s not even a page long, actually.
“The important thing is it says: Fair.
“And this covers many things, fairness for me and for Oscar.
“I don’t choose that these things happen. We don’t care what’s happened in the past, but we do what we think is right for us.”
Responding to a PlanetF1.com post on social media – seen by more than 1.4 million users at the time of writing – Lane claimed that Norris’s comments revealed a frustration with the situation at McLaren.
And he welcomed McLaren’s decision to swap Piastri and Norris in the closing laps at Monza, arguing that it has injected a “little spice” into the F1 2025 title battle.
Lane said: “Toys and pram are the words that spring to mind.
“I’m not going to criticise this team action because it has helped generate the (inevitable) little spice required going forward.
“The temperature can only ratchet up now and I look forward to the next episode.”
More on McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris from PlanetF1.com
Lane’s comments come after Nico Rosberg, the 2016 World Champion, called for McLaren to “sit down” and prepare a plan of action for potential flashpoints between Norris and Piastri in the closing eight races of the season.
Rosberg clinched his only championship in 2016 after a tense rivalry with Hamilton, with the German’s title-winning season defined by collisions with his Mercedes teammate in Spain and Austria.
Appearing on the Sky F1 podcast, Rosberg said: “These are horrible situations.
“What I would really ask McLaren is please sit down, take time to plan ahead for as many possible situations as possible and clearly define them amongst your drivers.
“That’s really what they have to do. And even though some situations like this are just really hard to plan for, it’s really their duty to do that.”
Rosberg went on to claim that McLaren is fortunate that there have been so few heated moments between Norris and Piastri so far this season.
He added: “I think McLaren has been a bit lucky that their two drivers are not yet proper assassins.
“They’re just getting there, but they’re haven’t arrived yet.
“I think that’s what’s been holding up the whole situation so far.
“But still, the intensity still lies ahead of us, because the World Championship is so big, it’s your childhood dream that’s at stake there. It’s so huge.
“They’re going to be fighting every weekend, so there’s still plenty of action ahead of us.”
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