Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has warned rivals McLaren against setting complicated precedents after team orders were used to invert the positions of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris at the Italian Grand Prix.
McLaren’s pit wall ordered Piastri to give second place back to Norris at Monza after the sequencing of their pit stops, and a slow tyre change on Norris’ car resulted in Piastri gaining a position over his teammate.
The decision saw Norris close the gap in the title standings to 31 points in a tense championship battle that looks set to be contested solely by the McLaren drivers.
Wolff, who oversaw the championship fights between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Mercedes in the mid-2010s, said there was always a risk of setting precedents when issuing team orders.
“There is no right and there is no wrong,” he said when asked what he would have done in McLaren’s position. “And I’m curious to see how that ends up.
“You set a precedent that is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake and it’s not a pit stop, do you switch them around?
“But then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver that is trying to catch up, lose the points, is not fair either.
“So I think we are going to get our response of whether that was right today towards the end of the season when it heats up.”
Wolff said only time will tell if the Monza orders have repercussions on the title battle, but also admitted McLaren had such a big lead over its rivals that it was dealing with “luxury problems.
“The answer over whether managing it that way [is correct] is going to come towards the end of the season, it’s going to get more fierce,” Wolff said. “I think if the team made a mistake, the team inverted the positions, absolutely fair decision.
“On the other side, you know… What is a team mistake? What if next time around the car doesn’t start up and you lose a position or whatever, or the suspension breaks? What do you do then in the next one?
“So you could have a cascade of events or precedents, that can be very difficult to manage. But I can only speak of how, you know, how we find ourselves in this situation back on all those years that we had to manage.
“And I think most important is to have a clear strategy. You either go like this or you go the other way around. Either try to race or try to balance it in the most possible fair way bearing in mind that he’ll be back there at the end.
“You have to define whatever path you choose — and it’s a luxury problem. They can’t lose those championships anymore.”
Wolff went on to acknowledge that Hamilton and Rosberg were very different characters to Norris and Piastri.
“I think we had two different animals in the car,” he said. ” You know, Lewis and Nico, they were two fierce combatants that took no prisoners racing against each other.
“At times, very difficult to manage for the team. I don’t see that at McLaren … it’s a bit corporate.”
