McLaren CEO Zak Brown has spoken about team orders between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri ahead of this weekend's Australian Grand Prix.
This week, all eyes will be on Albert Park in Melbourne as the much-anticipated 2026 F1 season gets underway.
Heading into the first Grand Prix, McLaren are the defending champions having won back-to-back titles.
Meanwhile, Norris is defending his own world championship after a glorious 2025 saw him beat Max Verstappen and Piastri to clinch his maiden F1 crown.
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During what was a dramatic and tense title fight in 2025, one of the main talking points was the inter-team battle at McLaren between Norris and Piastri.
McLaren implemented the famous 'Papaya Rules', which means that Norris and Piastri were free to race fairly.
However, the 'Papaya Rules' were criticised after Norris appeared to hit Piastri during the Singapore Grand Prix without consequences.
Meanwhile, during the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, Piastri was told to hold position and refrain from attacking Norris.
As reported by Planet F1, Brown was asked what the decision would be if the same scenario happened this weekend.
He said: "The identical thing would happen. And let me explain. They were free to race. If you look at what was happening in the race, we didn’t know if it was going to be wet or if it was going to be dry. You got Oscar coming up on Lando. We’ve got a good lead. We don’t know if we need to finish on these tyres. The track’s half wet, the track’s half dry. They’re coming up on traffic.
"It was hit the pause button. It was not stop. It was hit the pause button. You saw what happened not long after, both our guys went off so it was very tricky conditions."
Brown continued: "So being free to race doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be points in a race where you have to assess what’s going on. So that was less about the competition. Had nothing to do with the competition about Lando and Oscar. We didn’t want to put both our cars at risk, not yet knowing how the weather and the track conditions were going to play out."
The American also touched on people criticising the team orders decisions.
Brown added: "We’ve said that 100 times. To me, it makes perfect sense. I don’t understand why people once we’ve explained it, I get the heat of the moment when you’re watching the broadcast, but we’ve explained it, and I think what’s just come out of my mouth makes perfect sense.
"It was hit the pause button so we can see how this race plays out, and then you can go back to racing, which is exactly what we did. So I think that’s a good example of some people needing to be more informed about how a race plays out."
Topics: Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Formula 1, McLaren
Marcus Chan