McLaren inflict ‘papaya rules’ on Norris and Piastri

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has highlighted the “papaya rules” in play at the Italian Grand Prix between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

The duo will start the race from Monza in first and second place respectively with Norris pipping his team-mate to pole position by one-tenth of a second.

McLaren is currently chasing Red Bull in the constructors’ standings and sit 30 points down ahead of the Monza race.

As McLaren looks to secure another memorable result, Stella hinted his drivers are free to race – as long as extra care is taken between both.

“In terms of approaching the first corner, our recommendation is always racing with the papaya rules, whereby, when the car is papaya, as you are always careful with any other competitor, but if the car is papaya, you take even extra care,” Stella told media including RacingNews365.

“We need to make sure, especially with the car [being] so competitive. that we see the chequered flag and that we try and drive the race in synergy between our two drivers, rather than thinking ‘my main competitor is my teammate’.

“We try to stay away from this kind of mindset, because it’s not productive.”

Stella unbothered by F1 start concerns

A concern at McLaren in the past, particularly on Norris’ side of the garage, has been race starts.

Stella is confident the Woking-based squad has made strides forward to quell the weakness.

“In terms of the race to start, what we will try and do is just the continuation of the work of optimisation that we have been doing lately,” he said.

“We have faced issues of different kinds, like in Zandoovrt, it didn’t have to do at all with the drivers. I think it was more in the preparation of the tyres that we were not in condition to maximise the grip.

“Oscar and Lando had exactly the same start. Some other times it was more to do with optimisation of some other parameters, or some other times it was more in the execution.

“It’s often small factors that you need to optimise, and you need to optimise the entirety of the factors. This is the process, the review that we have gone through lately.

“So hopefully we’ve been able now to maximise all these factors, and we can have a good take off the grid.”