{"id":942148,"date":"2026-10-27T01:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T01:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/942148\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T01:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T01:10:17","slug":"why-mclaren-gave-team-order-to-oscar-piastri-in-f1-us-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/942148\/","title":{"rendered":"Why McLaren gave team order to Oscar Piastri in F1 US GP"},"content":{"rendered":"

McLaren<\/a> team principal Andrea Stella has explained the reasoning behind asking Oscar Piastri<\/a> to wave Lando Norris<\/a> past in Formula 1\u2019s United States Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Piastri and Norris locked out the fourth row of the grid at the Circuit of The Americas, having failed to challenge the Mercedes<\/a>, Red Bulls and Ferraris in Q3.<\/p>\n

However, over the first seven laps of the race, Piastri lost one second per lap to race leader Kimi Antonelli \u2013 precisely 0.997s on average, discounting lap one \u2013 and couldn\u2019t even keep up with a struggling George Russell<\/a>, who was pulling away by two tenths a lap.<\/p>\n

Norris complained on the radio he was \u201cbeing held up\u201d by his team-mate; McLaren asked the Australian to let his team-mate through, which he duly did in Turn 1 on lap eight. Norris went on to pull away by four seconds in seven laps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had seen during the weekend that Lando was a little bit faster than Oscar,\u201d Stella detailed. \u201cThis is a track in which Lando excels and is one of the tracks in which Oscar instead struggles a little bit more.<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Andrea Stella, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Andy Hone\/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, in particular for Oscar, is tricky because Oscar’s superpower is to build; once he creates references, he can really effectively build lap after lap. But here every lap is different, so these are the conditions that challenge Oscar and actually are the conditions where Lando uses his own superpower, which is being very adaptive to the conditions, especially as the car slides.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, given this context, we discussed before the race that if Lando was behind Oscar, and Oscar could not keep up with the cars ahead, then we could have given Lando a chance or an opportunity to see if we could attack the cars ahead \u2013 and that’s what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

This meant a lot to McLaren after its drivers collided in the Singapore sprint race. \u201cIt’s a way of demonstrating that as a team and together with the drivers, we care about the interests of the team, which was always the conversation that we have had,\u201d Stella added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd especially after Singapore, we reinforced how much it’s important that we all together help McLaren go back to the position that we want to have, which is Oscar and Lando, first row in qualifying, fighting for the win, and then we manage the internal competition. But up to then, all together, we need to sustain the trajectory of McLaren back to the front.\u201d<\/p>\n

How Norris fought for the podium
\n \"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

McLaren picked a one-stop strategy in a bid to challenge the other top teams on Sunday, with Ferrari<\/a> duo Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Charles Leclerc<\/a>, plus\u00a0Max Verstappen<\/a> on two stops. Norris consequently held second place until lap 46, before succumbing to those three drivers \u2013 but he still managed to undercut Isack Hadjar<\/a> and Russell on his way to fifth place, with Piastri likewise beating the Silver Arrow to seventh.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to deploy the hard tyres, which in practice seemed to be competitive, and we knew that the others were going for the softer side of the tyre allocation,\u201d Stella explained. \u201cOnce we saw the first stint and the fact that they were struggling a bit, we got some encouragement that using the hard tyres could have been a good way of catching up.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we were actually catching up compared to the two Ferraris and Verstappen in the second stint. At some stage, we just decided to go for the one-stop, because if we go for a two, we are always going to stay behind. The one-stop gives you the possibility to take advantage of a safety car, which didn’t come. We are still waiting for a compensation for what happened in Madrid \u2013 it will come,\u201d the Italian added, referring to Norris losing a potential win to an untimely VSC period at Madring<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also attempted to see what’s left in the hard tyres, but honestly, we knew that it was very, very unlikely that we could have kept Verstappen and in particular Leclerc behind. With Hamilton, we thought it was more dependent on the final tail of the hard tyres. Nobody could have known, but worthwhile giving it a go.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are happy with the strategy execution; we are happy with the fact that we kind of understood which tyres needed to be used today; happy with the fact that the car seems to have improved thanks to the upgrades. But we need to improve our qualifying performance, and we also need to keep improving the car if we want to consistently compete for podiums, but above all for victories.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLaren is on a four-round podiumless streak, its worst spell of form by that metric since the last two rounds of the 2023 season and the first two of its title-winning 2024 campaign.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has explained the reasoning behind asking Oscar Piastri to wave Lando Norris past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,129598,813,1737,913,806,805,803,804,2333,85,129597,509367],"class_list":["post-942148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-formula-1","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports","tag-united-states-gp","tag-why-mclaren-gave-team-order-to-oscar-piastri-in-f1-us-gp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}