The ‘extreme concern’ Andrea Stella had over Lando Norris team orders tension

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella had full confidence in Lando Norris being a team player, as the British driver kept the lead ahead of Oscar Piastri.

With Norris benefitting from an undercut at the final stops, he kept his McLaren team sweating until Lap 68 before relinquishing the lead to teammate Oscar Piastri as his race engineer made repeated requests to swap positions.

Andrea Stella had no doubts Lando Norris would obey team order

With the radio messages from race engineer Will Joseph to Norris becoming increasingly pleading as the British driver argued his case to be allowed to stay in the lead ahead of Piastri, the possibility of Norris refusing to obey team orders seemed to becoming a very realistic one as the laps ticked by.

With Norris ceding the place with three laps to go, his obedience prevented any post-race tensions from continuing as the team was able to celebrate its first 1-2 finish in three years.

Speaking to media after the race, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said he never had any doubt Norris would relinquish the position to Piastri – a stance backed up by the Spaniard not taking to the radio to speak directly to Norris himself.

“No. I know Lando enough,” he said, when asked about the scenario unfolding with Norris retaining the lead to take the win at the chequered flag – a position that would have played into his hands in the Drivers’ Championship as Norris aims to close down Max Verstappen.

“I know that, when you have a race driver and you deal with a race driver, sometimes you have to communicate with all the sides that exist inside the race driver.

“But I know enough and well enough that, inside Lando, we have the race driver and the team player. These two elements came along perfectly today to generate what was the right thing to do for the team, for Oscar, and for Lando.

“So we are very happy from this point of view, you know that no race driver is such by nature that would say, ‘Okay, then, when are we going to do that?’

“They always hope – they are P1 in a Formula 1 Grand Prix, and they hope like, ‘Oh, maybe the team will let me get it’.

“But we were very clear already, before the race. So it’s a situation that I think it proves, it shows, and it demonstrates once again, what it means to be part of the McLaren Formula 1 team.

“These are the values – sometimes they conflict with some instincts of a race driver. But the values, the culture, and the good for the team stays always the most important thing.”

With McLaren having created the situation in the first place by pitting Norris first with the British driver close enough to the lead to be within undercut range of Piastri, Stella explained why Norris had been given priority as the team feared an undercut from behind from the likes of Lewis Hamilton.

“We knew that, by going first with Lando, that could have been the situation, but we wouldn’t have done it if we weren’t sure that this would be fixed,” he said.

“Today, because we are at the Hungaroring and because it was so hot, there were two variables that we really wanted to get right. The first one, we didn’t want to pit too early because the tyres were degrading a lot. 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 stop as much as possible. The second element is that you can have a problem at the stop. So you need to go safe from a pitstop point of view, or do you want to pit only when you have three seconds?

“Because then you know what happens – all the pressure goes on the pit crew. I don’t want, in a race like today, that the responsibility goes to the pit crew. I’d rather take the responsibility of the pitwall and secure the 1-2 and then manage the situation between the pitwall and the drivers – because we talked about the situation and we know how we go about the situation.

“I know that for the media, for watching on TV, this becomes a story. But for us, internally, this becomes part of the way we go racing. That’s why we invest so much in culture, in values, and in the mindset, because we want to be able to manage the situation if we want to be in the championship with Lando, with Oscar, and with McLaren.”

While Norris appeared to have tried to resist the team order initially until worn down, Stella said he would have been far more concerned if his driver had not applied the pressure on his team that he did.

“He’s a race driver. Mention to me a race driver who would have not done it. I think you can mention many who would have not done it until Lap 70,” he said.

“I would be extremely concerned if Lando had not demonstrated, ‘I’m a race driver’ because that’s the ethos you need to fight hard, like you need to fight when you are in contention with the likes of Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, and Oscar himself.

“So it demonstrated the ethos, the spirit of the race driver, but I think it would be unfair, it could be something that is entertaining to talk about the somehow controversial aspects, but it would be unfair not to talk about the resolution, which happened according to our way of going racing.”

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Lando Norris: It wasn’t easy, but I was confident I would give up the place

Speaking to the media after the Grand Prix, Norris spoke about the thoughts that had raced through his mind as he pondered the possibility of not obeying the team order.

“Things are always going to go through your mind because, you know… You’ve got to be selfish in this sport at times,” he said.

“You’ve got to think of yourself. That’s priority number one, is to think of yourself. I’m also a team player, so my mind was going pretty crazy at the time. I know what we’ve done in the past between Oscar and myself. He’s helped me plenty of times… I think this is a different situation. This is not someone helping one another.

“I was put into a position, and we were undoing that position change. But I mean, I’m also, and I get it, and I know a lot of people are going to say, like, the gap between me and Max is pretty big, 60, 70, 80 points or something. You know, if Red Bull and Max make the mistakes like they did today and continue to do that, and as a team we continue to improve and have weekends like we’ve had this weekend, we can turn it around. And it’s still optimistic. It’s still a big goal to say, yeah, we can close 70 points and as a driver, I can close 70 points in half a season.

“And then when you’re thinking of the seven or six points that I give away, then… It crosses your mind for sure. So it was not easy, but I also understood the situation I was in and I was quite confident always by the last lap I would have done it.”

Given that Norris kept his team guessing right to the end of the race as to whether he’d obey, he explained that he never felt he needed to explain on the radio as to his plan to move aside late in the race.

“I don’t need to. I know what I’m going to do and what I’m not going to do,” he said.

“Of course, I’m going to just question it and challenge it, and that’s what I did. Yeah. I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner. But then they said if there was a Safety Car all of a sudden, and I couldn’t let Oscar go through, then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot. Yeah, then I was like, ‘yeah, it’s fair point’.

“And I let him go, two to go or something. And straight away, I let him go. So yeah, I mean, that’s just your opinion of what you hear. But that’s the same with all sports. You can make what you will of what you hear and what you think you know and that kind of stuff. But I know that I always was going to give it back unless they changed their mind on what they were saying. And they didn’t. So all good.”

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