At the Italian Grand Prix 2025 in Monza, the spotlight fell on McLaren after a disastrous 5.9-second pit stop suddenly flipped the running order between their title hopefuls, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The team has been getting hate for their decision to swap the places on the track, as Oscar Piastri was ordered to let Lando Norris pass and regain the second position. Now, enter the Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff, who himself has some experience in managing an intense Hamilton-Roseberg rivalry back in the day. So, let’s see what he thinks about the decision.
McLaren’s Italian Grand Prix 2025 Pit-Stop Mess
So, what really happened? Both Norris and Piastri were comfortably running behind Max Verstappen, battling not just for podium glory but championship points. McLaren, trying to play it safe from Ferrari’s undercut threat, pitted Piastri first, a smart, tactical move. But Motorsport lives for “what ifs.” Norris’s pit stop went from routine to disaster when a sticky wheel nut slowed him to a painful 5.9 seconds, giving Piastri the jump on track.
Within seconds, McLaren’s pit wall piped into Piastri’s radio: “Oscar, let Lando pass.” Piastri initially pushed back, saying slow pit stops are just part of racing, but ultimately handed back the position, restoring the running order and trimming Norris’s championship deficit.
Toto Wolff’s Take
Here’s where Toto Wolff stepped into the conversation with signature F1 candour. “You set a precedent that is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake? Do you switch them around? But then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver that is trying to catch up lose the points is not fair either,”
Toto Wolff’s message? If a team decides to reverse positions because of a pit-stop blunder, what happens when the next accident or error hits? If fairness means changing the order, then every future hiccup triggers a swap. And is that truly fair to the driver who benefited from quick thinking or raw luck?.
Wolff didn’t hand out gold stars or red flags. Instead, he kept it neutral and subtle. He said, “There’s no right and there’s no wrong. I’m curious to see how that ends up. I think we are going to get our response of whether there was right today towards the end of the season, when it heats up.” It’s the kind of suspense only Formula 1 can offer, where every decision now could echo through the rest of the year.
Lando, Oscar, and the Team Orders Tightrope
McLaren still stands strong on their no-team-order policy, or as we call it, the “Papaya rules.” Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are at the top of the points table, with Piastri leading the pack and Norris trailing behind by 31 points. All eyes will be on McLaren to see how they manage this rivalry going forward.
