Former Formulation 1 driver David Coulthard has pointed to a problem with how McLaren handles group orders throughout grands prix.
The Woking outfit’s papaya guidelines grew to become a well-liked speaking level throughout 2025 as each drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, fought for the drivers’ championship. Norris and Piastri had been free to battle it out on monitor with the one provision that they saved it clear, however there have been a couple of cases the place the group enforced group orders.
Coulthard argued throughout an look on The Crimson Flags Podcast that the group orders ought to have been issued by group principal Andrea Stella quite than the driving force’s race engineer.
“The one criticism I’d have is that I don’t like when the engineer – as a result of that bond between the driving force and the engineer, for me, needs to be absolute. I’d liken it to: when you guys are within the trenches collectively and somebody blows the whistle again within the day to exit and combat the enemy, you’ve bought to know that you simply’re each going on the identical time,” he defined.
“You recognize, [they’re] not hiding behind you, and also you’re not hiding; you’re there shoulder to shoulder. In order that relationship between driver and engineer needs to be unbreakable, that bond.
David Coulthard on the grid in the course of the Dash
Picture by: Dom Gibbons / LAT Photographs through Getty Photographs
“So I believe that once they do give ‘transfer over, don’t race’ kind directions, that ought to come from the group principal or sporting director. It shouldn’t come from the race engineer.
“The motive force ought to completely imagine that his engineer would say: ‘That’s not my job, my job is to get my driver successful, and I’ll solely give directions that may assist that. However I’m an expert and subsequently if there’s an instruction which goes to get my driver to carry place, that has to come back from another person within the group’.”
Whereas the papaya guidelines got here below scrutiny in 2025, McLaren went on to win the constructors’ championship and drivers’ championship with Lando Norris.
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