What the ‘entire field’ thought of McLaren’s team orders in Hungary for Oscar Piastri’s maiden F1 win

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McLaren’s team orders saga in Hungary divided opinion among F1 fans after Lando Norris looked set to disobey them, before letting Oscar Piastri past to win the race.

The whole situation arose after McLaren elected to pit Lando Norris first ahead of race leader Oscar Piastri, in an attempt to cover off a potential threat from Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen at the end of the race.

In doing so, it enabled Norris to undercut his teammate and take the lead in the race. McLaren assured Piastri that the positions would swap, having asked Norris to hand it back several laps after the pit stops took place.

What followed was an extraordinary sequence of events whereby Norris appeared to ignore the wishes of his team in an attempt to bank an extra seven points. After pleading with him several times over the team radio, Norris eventually gave the position back to Piastri and settled for second.

The decision of whether he should have given it back was the subject of debate, with Peter Windsor calling it “outrageous” that Norris gave away the win while fighting for a championship with Verstappen. Journalist Craig Slater claims to have spoken to several drivers and most came to a surprising outcome when speaking on the Sky Sports F1 podcast.

F1 drivers respond to McLaren team orders saga

Team orders are not new in F1 having been used since the championship began in the 1950s. Nico Rosberg likened the whole situation to his days at Mercedes when fighting for titles with Lewis Hamilton.

When quizzing the drivers on whether they would have done the same thing, Slater says many were united in their opinions.

“Drivers like Martin Brundle think McLaren should have given that victory to Lando Norris with the extra seven points,” said Slater.

“Pretty much the entire field disagreed with that and actually thought McLaren was spot on in allowing the justice of that Grand Prix to play out and Oscar was the deserving driver for the victory.”

Lando Norris thinks he does not ‘have what it takes’ to win titles

Norris heads into the summer break 78 points behind Verstappen in the championship, while that could have arguably been less if he converted his poles this season into wins.

While Kimi Raikkonen came back to win a title from a similar margin in 2007, Norris would need to outscore Verstappen by at least 7.8 points per-race to equal the Red Bull driver.

Given their reliability in the last couple of years, it seems unlikely that Verstappen and Red Bull will be in trouble. McLaren could still win the Constructors’ Championship for the first time since 1998, provided Sergio Perez continues to be outscored by both Piastri and Norris.

Norris himself has also recently claimed that he makes too many mistakes and that they will need to be cut out before he can dethrone Verstappen, who stands a chance of taking his fourth title in a row in 2024.