Piastri accepts McLaren's team orders in Australia: "The circumstances were quite extreme"

It was one of the main questions during the off-season: after the turmoil of 2024, McLaren Will it resolve to quickly apply team orders between its two drivers in 2025? It didn't take long to get a first element of an answer, since we saw the first order being given this Sunday, during the Australian Grand Prix... but under particular conditions.

If McLaren has gave Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri the freedom to fight on track for victory, ahead of the Australian weekend, the British team intervened mid-race to freeze the positions at a particular moment in the race. Indeed, approaching the 30th lap, the Australian was catching up with the Briton by tenths per lap. The two McLaren drivers were then coming up against backmarkers and, on a drying track with only one dry line, the English team decided not to take any risks and to maintain this order while overtaking the slower cars.

Piastri does not dispute the instructions, but...

"We should maintain our position, go through the dry and avoid the late cars.", announced Tom Stallard, race engineer ofOscar piastri, into his pilot's radio. To which the Australian replied: "I'm faster, but that's OK.". Alas, by the time he had passed the blue flags and after receiving permission to race again on lap 32, Oscar Piastri had lost contact with Lando Norris due to a small scare in turn 6 and tires in worse condition than his teammate. In the end, the Englishman won the race while the Aussie, trapped by the rain and stuck for a long time in the grass, finished in a distant 9th place.

After the race, Oscar Piastri was asked about this first team order of the season.. While the local driver accepted this order given the track conditions, he would still like to discuss it with McLaren to find out the exact reasons for this call. "We were already holding our position before [that radio message]. I think the moment we were free to fight, it kind of killed my left front tire coming up behind Lando. At that point, there wasn't much I could do, said Oscar Piastri in Melbourne. I think the race and the circumstances were pretty extreme. We were getting close to the backmarkers, there was only one dry line, we didn't know if there was going to be rain. So I'm going to talk to the team to try to better understand what happened. But I think it's always clear that these kinds of instructions can go either way."

An ultimately useless instruction

Long in contention for a podium finish, or even a victory, with a faster pace than that of leader Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri can have some regrets about a small error in the rain which cost him dearly at home. "I tried to push a little too hard, I think. In these conditions, it's very difficult to assess the degree of sliding, he explained. I think from one lap to the next, the situation changed a lot and I could see Lando going in front of me, but I was also already in the corner. There wasn't much you could do to slow me down at that point. Once you're in the gravel, in the grass, you're obviously trying to keep the car as straight as possible. To get stuck in the grass like that was pretty incredible, sitting in the car. I can only blame myself."

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