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Motorsport

What are McLaren's papaya rules ahead of F1's 2025 title decider?

Abu Dhabi (Organization) Oscar Piastri Lando Norris McLaren F1 Andrea Stella Max Verstappen Zak Brown LAT Images Motorsport Images

As McLaren goes into Formula 1’s 2025 title decider with both drivers in contention for the world championship against Max Verstappen, two words come up again and again: papaya rules.

The phrase was coined by team principal Andrea Stella – “Andreas like to come up with different names for different things,” Lando Norris explained – and was first brought up on 1 September 2024, ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.

Norris and Oscar Piastri locked out the front row of the grid at Monza, where first-corner incidents are frequent.

“In terms of approaching the first corner, our recommendation is always the 'racing with the papaya rules',” Stella said. “You are always careful with any other competitor, but if the car is papaya you take even extra care, because we need to make sure, especially the car being so competitive, that we see the chequered flag.

“We try to stay away from this kind of mindset that my main competitor is my team-mate, because it's not productive.”

On lap one of the race, Piastri went around the outside of Norris in Variante della Roggia, snatching the lead away with a remarkable move that destabilised his team-mate and caused him to lose second place to Charles Leclerc – which was sub-optimal as Norris still had an outside title chance.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38 battles with Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38 (Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images)

Asked to explain papaya rules after the race, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown told Sky: “The papaya rules are, it's your team-mate, race them hard, race them clean, don't touch. That happened. It was an aggressive pass, so that's a conversation that we'll have, it was a bit nerve-wracking on pitwall. But it's really just, you know, respect your team-mate.”

Subsequently asked whether Piastri’s move was within the papaya rules, Stella said: “We will have to review together with the drivers, look at the videos, understand their point of view, and then we will assess together whether they were fully compliant or not.

“We will take the learning, if there is any learning that we need to take, and then we will adjust the papaya rules such that they allow us to pursue in the best possible manner both the constructors' championship and the drivers' championship.”

To put it simply, papaya rules initially were all about the McLaren drivers not crashing into each other.

“Papaya rules is just a quick way for a race engineer to remind our drivers that we don't want to see any contact between the two papaya cars, we race respectfully, and no risks,” Stella had to clarify the following weekend on Sky. “The whole topic about how we chase the championship is not covered by the papaya rules.”

In other words, it was not meant to be about team orders. Yet that’s how papaya rules quickly went on to be understood in the media and then by the wider paddock, as Piastri’s potential support for Norris’ 2024 title bid was debated.

Going into the 2025 season opener, Norris announced: “There are no papaya rules, at the minute there's nothing. We're free to race.”

This was somewhat ambiguous as to what he was exactly referring to.

Lando Norris, McLaren (Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images)

Then things started getting heated as Norris crashed into Piastri in the Canadian Grand Prix.

“In the coming days we will have to go into what is needed to make sure that when we go racing, we preserve the margins that are required,” Stella said. “We will have conversations, and the conversations may be even tough.”

Two weeks later, Piastri nearly collided with his team-mate in Austria. His race engineer Tom Stallard warned him on the radio: “The pitwall has decided that the Turn 4 manoeuvre was too marginal. We can't do that again.” This implied that the move was too risky by papaya rules standards, yet Brown branded it an “epic battle”.

Then, the following weekend, the first issue of fairness came up. Race leader Piastri was given a 10-second penalty for braking erratically under safety car conditions at Silverstone. “I don’t think the penalty before was very fair. I think we should swap back and race,” he suggested. McLaren declined to launch a team order.

Piastri did admit after the race that swapping places with Norris ‘wouldn’t have been particularly fair’ as “Lando didn’t do anything wrong”, but it showed the increasing strain on McLaren as it attempted to manage the title contenders, who were separated by just eight points.

Giving an interview to Motorsport during the summer break, Piastri insisted: “There's always been a lot more made out about papaya rules than what there actually is. It is literally one rule which is don't crash into each other.”

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren (Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images)

Stella reiterated that stance as F1 reconvened at Zandvoort, with a caveat: “They are free to race in the sense that we want to give them the opportunity to express their talent, their abilities, their aspirations, but for instance, this should always be made within the boundaries of the team interest coming first, and the team interest may have different meanings depending on the situation.”

And there was a situation like this the following weekend at Monza, as McLaren did its best to maintain its drivers’ positions – Norris second and Piastri third – during their last pitstops, only for a botched tyre change to drop Norris behind. The Australian was then asked to let him through.

Piastri was defiant on the radio: “We said a slow pitstop was part of racing, so I don't know what has changed.” After the race, his discourse had somewhat changed, as he branded the order “a fair request”.

Norris touched Piastri at the start in Singapore while overtaking his team-mate, which McLaren reacted to by giving Piastri priority to choose in which order to exit the pits in qualifying at Austin. But the team backtracked after Piastri was the main culprit of a Turn 1 tangle in the sprint race the next day, which Norris got caught up in – though it was mostly a racing incident.

Finally, at the penultimate round of the season in Qatar, McLaren made a major strategy mistake when the safety car neutralised the race, failing to pit as it seemed uncertain of how to proceed without favouring one driver over another. Piastri and Norris had been running first and third, but they ended up second and fourth as Verstappen won and got even closer in the championship.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren (Photo by: Lars Baron / LAT Images via Getty Images)

Norris is therefore going into the title decider leading Verstappen by 12 points and Piastri by 16. Although the latter is theoretically free to race, Brown has stated he would be asked to move over if it were a title-winning call.

“We're going to start the weekend like we have the other 23, which is going in giving both drivers equal opportunity,” the American said. “So we're going to use common sense. We're not going to throw away a drivers’ championship over a sixth and a seventh place, a third and a fourth place, a fifth and a sixth place.

“If one of our drivers doesn't have the opportunity, I think everything we do, we do with the drivers. So they know what the game plan is for this weekend, and outside of our racing team you're a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't. So we're going to just stay true to our racing principles. We want to win the constructors’, which we've done. We want to win the drivers’, and so we'll see how the race plays out.”

So, as the Abu Dhabi GP unfolds, the papaya rules having ‘different meanings depending on the situation’ – as per Stella – certainly will come in handy.