Does McLaren’s explanation for its F1 team orders controversy stack up?

McLaren may have delivered a dominant 1-2 at Formula 1’s Hungarian Grand Prix, but it did not come without controversy thanks to the team orders controversy.

A decision to pit Lando Norris first at the final round of stops handed the Briton the undercut and the lead against Oscar Piastri, and meant that when his team-mate pitted two laps later the Australian came out behind.

What played out after that was a fascinating toing and froing between the pitwall and Norris after a request for him to reverse positions initially fell on deaf ears.

While Norris did eventually pull over with two laps to go, it was not lost on anyone that McLaren had made what should have been a wonderful afternoon a bit more complicated than necessary.

As Norris said afterwards: “I feel like we made things way too hard for ourselves and way too tricky for ourselves.

“We should have just boxed Oscar first and things would have been simple, but they gave me the lead and I gave it back.”

Watch: Piastri Takes The Win in Tension Filled F1 Hungarian Grand Prix – Race Reaction

Piastri added: “I’m sure it’s something we’ll discuss as a team. The information I had at the time was Lando was boxing early to cover Lewis [Hamilton], and I was going long to cover Max [Verstappen], essentially, because I knew that he’d stop later, and I think we were just being very safe.

“Of course, that naturally gave Lando an undercut and maybe made things a little bit more complicated than it needed to be. But yeah, I’m sure that’s something we’ll go through.”

Piastri’s reference to the influence of the other cars was explained by McLaren boss Andrea Stella as the trigger for what happened – and that there was no fear from senior management of briefly having the cars in the wrong order if that helped guarantee the 1-2.

The team orders situation was prompted by the decision to pit Norris first on lap 45, when he was just two seconds behind Piastri after steadily closing in over the second stint.

McLaren had been mindful about the advantage that third-placed Hamilton had with fresh tyres, after he had stopped on lap 40.

Having initially come out 29.36 seconds behind Norris on his first flying lap, Hamilton chipped away to close the gap. Over the next few laps, the gap between him and his fellow British came down. From 27.9s it was reduced to 26.8s, then 25.5s before Norris pitted.

With time lost to a pitstop around 20s, there was not much buffer left for Norris to come in and be guaranteed he came out ahead of the Mercedes if there was a pitstop delay, with it already having been seen elsewhere that overtaking was much more difficult on Sunday than anticipated.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

McLaren was also juggling concerns about tyre degradation, so did not want to pit either of its drivers too early in case it found itself running out of rubber at the end.

This was especially a factor for Piastri because Verstappen had been running an offset strategy and was just nine seconds back at this stage. If he pitted late on for fresh rubber that could have handed him some serious pace if Piastri found himself in a situation where he was running out of tyres.

As Stella explained: “We didn’t want to pit too early. Because the tyres were degrading a lot, and we didn’t want to run out of tyres should Verstappen become a problem at the end of the race.

“Therefore, we just wanted to delay the pitstop as much as possible. And the second element is that you can have a problematic pitstop. So, you need to go safe from a pitstop point of view.

“Do you want to pit only when you have three seconds? Because then you know what happens, that all the pressure goes on the pitcrew. I don’t want in a race like today that the responsibility goes to the pitcrew.

“I’d rather take the responsibility at the pitwall [to] secure the P1, P2. And then we manage the situation between the pitwall and the drivers. Because we talk about this situation. And we know how we go about this situation.”

McLaren’s situation on which car it opted to pit first was therefore dictated by what Verstappen and Hamilton were doing – and to stop Piastri first could have risked trouble.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team, 1st position, with Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, 2nd position, after the race

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

With Verstappen closing in, pitting Piastri first could have handed the initiative to Red Bull – and then opened the risk of any trouble at a later stop for Norris dumping him behind Hamilton.

The data therefore makes total sense, as it is a situation where McLaren could easily have avoided the team orders mess but equally thrown away the win.

For Stella, he was not unduly concerned about how the optics looked from the outside, as all that mattered in the end was protecting the 1-2 finish – which was easily possible with the drivers working together.

But equally, he is not closed off to realising that perhaps there were lessons to be taken about how it played out.

“It will be arrogant that we take this very positive outcome, and we don’t look at the opportunities to do better,” added Stella. “But I would be a little careful in thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, we should have stopped in a different sequence’, or we should stop, whenever, earlier.

“Like I said before, there were some potential risks that we definitely wanted to exclude today. Because at no point should the car, for instance because of a pitstop problem, fall behind the traffic of Hamilton and Ferrari.”

No matter how uncomfortable things may have been at times on the pitwall in the closing stages as repeated messages were sent to Norris to ensure he pulled over, it was definitely a smaller nightmare for McLaren than if it had pitted its drivers in a different order and handed victory to a rival.