Oscar Piastri narrowly missed out on last season’s title, with a stretch of poor form in the final races proving costly. Looking ahead to 2026, Piastri hopes to respond and take another step forward in his performance.
Due to the nature of the Championship battle, McLaren’s use of team orders (broadly termed ‘papaya rules’) was a huge source of controversy – at least from the outside looking in.
Moving forward, Piastri says McLaren are going to make changes to how papaya rules were utilised in 2025. Still, the Australian emphasises that the overarching principles will remain.
Piastri admits McLaren could have avoided certain headaches
There were several moments of contention between Norris and Piastri last season. To some extent, this is unavoidable when two teammates are so evenly matched and fighting for the crown.
Historically, McLaren have received criticism for a reluctance to use team orders and build a title bid around a ‘number 1’ driver. From 2007 to 2010 to even 2024, the Woking operation have frequently been described as indecisive in crucial moments.
Perhaps conscious of this narrative, Andrea Stella’s team implemented papaya rules quite strongly last year.
Of course, McLaren’s interventions were not always well-received. The team’s instruction for Piastri to let Norris pass after the Briton’s slow stop in Monza, for example, was widely condemned in the aftermath.
Given that Norris only beat Verstappen to the Championship by two points, McLaren’s team orders in Italy were ultimately decisive. Then again, they could never have known this at the time – and Oscar Piastri certainly didn’t.
Although papaya rules will persist in 2026, Piastri explains there will be an evolution:
“It will look different. We probably caused headaches for ourselves that we didn’t need to at points last year.
“But I think as a general principle and a general way of going racing it does bring a lot of positives with it. It’s just how do we refine that, to try and keep it to just positives basically.
“Some tweaks for sure this year, but I think it’s pretty clear that we still want to go racing as much as a team as we can.”
“I think there was a lot more made out about it than actually happens. And there was a lot of hypothetical situations, and a lot of people that kind of think without knowing the complete inner workings.
“A lot of things appear differently to how they actually are.”