Oscar Piastri says Zak Brown’s ‘papaya rules’ at McLaren only consist of one bullet point

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The world of F1 was given a new phrase to talk about at last year’s Italian Grand Prix, where team principal Andrea Stella reminded his drivers of ‘papaya rules’ after they locked out the front row of the grid.

The motto has since stuck, and due to the 2025 season consisting of an intense title battle between Piastri and Norris, it has become a mantra for the drivers as they set their sights on each other whilst also remembering the Woking-based team’s rules of engagement.

Despite the pair clashing in Montreal earlier in the season, Guenther Steiner has predicted that a crash is ‘inevitable’ as the season starts to reach a boiling point after the conclusion of the summer break at the end of the month.

As it stands, the Australian holds a slender nine-point advantage over Norris in the 2025 F1 standings. Piastri has been tipped to win the title by various figures in the F1 paddock due to his raw consistency as opposed to his British teammate.

READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri’s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend

Oscar Piastri reveals that McLaren’s ‘papaya rules’ is to ‘literally’ not crash into Lando Norris

Speaking in an interview with Autosport, the championship leader touched upon the mysterious papaya rules that we have been hearing on the radio from McLaren’s race engineers throughout Grands Prix since last season.

“I think there’s there’s always been a lot more made out about papaya rules than what there actually is,” Piastri said. “It is literally one rule, which is don’t crash into each other.

“That’s kind of an unsaid rule in every team, but we’ve always been very open about how we go racing, trying not to spring any surprises on us as drivers.

“That’s been the biggest thing because that’s where things become difficult when you don’t expect something to happen.”

Inevitably, the McLaren pair had a coming together at the Canadian GP in June. F1 fans were impressed with how Zak Brown is managing his drivers due to their reactions afterwards, as Norris immediately apologised for his ambitious move that led to the crash.

READ MORE: McLaren driver Lando Norris’ life outside F1 from parents to celebration

Zak Brown ‘addressed’ the rule when McLaren knew Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris would be ‘involved’ in a title fight

Interestingly, Piastri noted that the rules were spoken about at the beginning of the season after early benchmarks of the MCL39 showed that the car had progressed from the promising signs of competitiveness it showed during the second half of last season.

“For me, that’s been a very big strength of ours,” the 24-year-old said about the openness of the team when discussing a title battle as the front-runners on the grid.

“We went into this year knowing that if we can improve a little bit on the car that we had from last year, we’ll be fighting for not just the constructor’s championship but the drivers’ championship, and it’ll most likely be both of us involved in that.

“We addressed it early, spoke about it, but we’re still going to be learning. There are still going to be situations that you can’t always predict. But I think we’ve done as good a job as we can of trying to go after that and be proactive instead of reactive.”

Andrea Stella revealed that he didn’t have to tell his McLaren drivers ‘anything’ during the recent Hungarian Grand Prix, even with there being a heart-in-the-mouth moment towards the end of the race, which could have seen Piastri and Norris losing out on a valuable one-two finish.