‘Got a fair shot’: Piastri’s final call on McLaren’s papaya rules as fresh ‘clear’ stance emerges

Oscar Piastri says McLaren will take a fresh approach to its so-called papaya rules this year after admitting his title rivalry with Lando Norris could have been better handled last season.

Piastri led the championship for 15 rounds last year, but a six-round no-podium streak following the European leg of the season saw him tumble to third in the standings behind title-winning teammate Norris and the resurgent Max Verstappen.

The Australian’s campaign began unravelling with a career-worst performance in Azerbaijan, which he later said was in part precipitated by the team order of the Italian Grand Prix, where he was forced to give up second place to Norris after the Briton suffered a slow pit stop.

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It was the highest profile example of McLaren intervening in a bid to maintain sporting fairness and competitive neutrality.

Two rounds later the team got itself in a muddle over whether or not to sanction Norris for barging Piastri towards the barriers in Singapore to take third place, and the risk of the Briton losing out in a double-stack pit stop played a role in the disastrous decision to leave both cars out during an early safety car in Qatar, costing Piastri what should have been a dominant victory.

McLaren insisted that these uncomfortable predicaments were the cost of keeping the fight between its drivers fair, though team boss Andrea Stella said decision-making would be “streamlined” in 2026.

But Piastri said the team now admits that its so-called papaya rules regime had become more trouble than it was worth and will undergo changes for 2026.

“We probably caused some headaches for ourselves that we didn’t need to at points last year,” he said.

“It will look different. For me, as Andrea said, streamlining it is a wise decision to make.

“As a general principle and a general way of going racing, it does bring a lot of positives with it; it’s just how 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.”

Piastri almost exclusively lost out from McLaren’s team orders last season. It was a trend that extended to strategy decisions earlier in the year, most notably in Hungary, where Norris was given what turned out to be a beneficial one-stop strategy after a terrible start that saw him win the race ahead of his teammate.

It triggered accusations of favouritism as the championship battle reached its crescendo, with the matter even making it all the way to Parliament House, much to the frustration of McLaren CEO Zak Brown.

Piastri denied he was mistreated to benefit his teammate, but he said the team conceded that their duel could have been better managed.

“I think I got a fair shot last year, and I’m expecting that to stay the exactly the same,” he said.

“That’s definitely not to say that certain things couldn’t have been done better last year. I think that was probably clear for everyone watching.

“But I think for me at no point were there any bad intentions or any times I questioned the intentions of things.

“There’s always a lot more made out about it than actually happens. There are a lot of hypothetical situations and a lot of people that think without knowing the complete inner workings. A lot of things appear differently to how they actually are.

“Again, things could have been done better, situations could have been handled differently, but that is part of elite sport and part of Formula 1. You’re never going to get every decision right.

“You’re never going to make every single person happy, and that’s part of the unique nature of Formula 1 given it’s a team sport with an individual prize at the end.

“I think I got a fair shot last year, and we’re working on how we can improve things and make sure that we try and become stronger.”

Piastri missed out on the championship by just 13 points at the final round. It was the closest an Australian has got to the title since Alan Jones claimed the 1980 world championship.

It was just the third year of the Australian’s career and demonstrated a sharp trajectory of improvement from his rookie 2023 season.

The Australian described it as another learning campaign, however, particularly given his struggles during the Americas leg of the schedule, during which he shipped 46 points to teammate Norris to lose the title lead.

“There were lessons both positive and negative,” he said. “Some of them were nice lessons to learn and some of them were tougher lessons to learn.

“In terms of performance and the peaks that I had last year, that was a nice confidence boost and statement for me that when I get things right and maximise my potential, I can be a very strong competitor.

“Some of the lessons in the back half of the year especially were very different in nature. I think a couple of things in Austin and Mexico from a technical point of view and more of a driving point of view [were things] that I hadn’t been challenged on earlier in the season. That was one lesson to take forward from that.”

The Australian appeared to become a victim of events in the final quarter of the year, with incidents in Baku, Singapore, Austin, Sao Paulo and Las Vegas — some his fault, others not — all costing him the chance to rebuild momentum.

He said he would be better prepared to deal with those sorts of spirals in 2026.

“Then obviously there was a pretty long string of races that were pretty eventful for lots of different reasons,” he said. “Just taking the lessons out of that and how I can manage those things better, how we as a team can manage those things better — that’s probably one of the most important lessons from last year for me.

“I feel like I’ve done a lot of good work to try and learn from that. I think the team has as well.

“We’ll make some tweaks, some changes, to how we go about things from every aspect. Obviously the main one you’re probably thinking about is how we race each other and how we go racing, but even just from a performance standpoint, a tyre management standpoint, I think there were a lot of lessons in various areas.

“Just constantly evolving and not staying still I think is one of the other big lessons from last year.”