Did McLaren’s papaya rules handling cost Norris drivers’ title?

Max Verstappen believes Lando Norris could have beaten him to the F1 drivers’ title, had McLaren handled its “nonsense” ‘papaya rules’ better. 

McLaren introduced the team orders code to instruct Norris and Oscar Piastri to race each other fairly, something which backfired on multiple occasions.

Team orders were first used by McLaren in Hungary, where Norris was instructed to relinquish the race lead to Piastri. 

This is because Norris had been allowed to undercut his McLaren sparring partner, under the condition that the lead would be returned to the Australian driver. 

For a significant number of laps, Norris refused to return the lead to his team-mate. However, the real issue arose in Monza, where papaya rules were scrutinised. 

Piastri pulled an aggressive overtake on Norris for the race lead on the opening lap of the Italian Grand Prix, which allowed Charles Leclerc to overtake the Briton. 

The Italian GP could have been a McLaren one-two, yet ended up costing the outfit a win. 

Following this moment, Piastri was treated effectively as a number two driver to Norris, until the Briton was out of drivers’ title contention.

Did McLaren’s papaya rules handling cost Norris the drivers’ title?

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