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McLaren’s team orders through the 2025 Formula 1 season were a bone of contention for many fans watching on.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were almost free to fight despite being McLaren teammates, but a few decisions made on the pit wall left a sour taste for spectators watching on.
A slow Norris pit stop in Monza saw Piastri asked to hand a position back, before the pair made contact in Singapore, with the Australian coming off worse.
Piastri was then at fault for a collision in Austin, and while all of this was going on, Max Verstappen ominously closed the gap in the championship.
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By the time it came down to the final race in Abu Dhabi, Piastri understood team orders would be in play, although Norris didn’t need them to secure the title by two points.
Former McLaren driver David Coulthard watched on throughout the 2025 season to see whether his old team would be able to get over the line and win a drivers’ championship for the first time since Lewis Hamilton’s triumph in 2008.
While he admits he was largely in favour of how McLaren acted last year, he wasn’t a fan of the role both race engineers played in proceedings.
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David Coulthard thinks McLaren chiefs should have delivered team orders to Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri
Coulthard was speaking about the situation at McLaren on The Red Flags Podcast and explained his viewpoint.
He said: “I think that McLaren, in the Prost-Senna and all of the other big battles they’ve had between teammates, is because they genuinely just want the best drivers and then try and manage them somehow.
“The only criticism I would have is that I don’t like it when the engineer, because that bond between the driver and the engineer for me has to be absolute. I’d liken it to if you guys are in the trenches together and someone blows the whistle back in the day to go out and fight the enemy.
“You’ve got to know that you’re both going at the same time. You’re not hiding behind, you and you’re not hiding you, you’re there shoulder-to-shoulder.
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“So, that relationship between driver and engineer has to be unbreakable. So I think that when they do give the move over, don’t race, type instructions that should come from the team principal or the sporting director.
“It should not come from the race engineer. The driver should absolutely believe that his engineer would say that’s not my job.
“My job is to get my driver winning, and I will only give instructions that can help with that.
“But I’m a professional and therefore if there’s an instruction which is going to get my driver to hold position that has to come from someone else in the team.”
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David Coulthard recalled ‘uncomfortable’ McLaren decision during the 2026 F1 season
Coulthard admitted that McLaren’s team orders in Italy made him ‘uncomfortable’ as Piastri was on the wrong end of a six-point swing as his championship lead started to ebb away.
He was outdriven by Norris and Verstappen during the final third of the season, only rediscovering his form in Qatar.
Another strategy blunder, this time impacting both drivers, cost the 24-year-old another victory, and Andrea Stella knows he needs to keep Piastri onside to avoid him exploring other options in the paddock.
Piastri has hinted that he sees his long-term future at McLaren, but things can very quickly change in Formula 1.
If Stella and Zak Brown don’t start taking responsibility for the toughest strategy calls, then they could eventually face a similar problem at McLaren that threatened to tear Mercedes apart when Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were teammates.
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