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McLaren finds itself with a Formula 1 predicament on its hands: how best to stage manage Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri?
Its remarkable ascent into F1's form outfit means it's reached the end of the European leg of the season just eight points shy of Red Bull in the constructors' championship and surely poised to take top spot next time out in Azerbaijan.
And it has a shot at the drivers' championship too, with Lando Norris 62 points behind Max Verstappen. But is he catching the three-time champion quickly enough, and should McLaren sacrifice Oscar Piastri - F1's form driver over the last four grands prix - to boost Norris's cause?
Our contributors give their take on how best to keep the peace and where McLaren's priorities should lie.
McLaren has to avoid screwing over Piastri
Scott Mitchell-Malm
I’m really not convinced Norris is in a proper title fight as I think Verstappen can get to the end of the season and limp over the line if he needs to.
That feels like the worst-case scenario - although if I’m wrong, I’ll take it, because then we’ll have witnessed one of the most remarkable comebacks in F1 history!
Everyone will have a different threshold for when someone is 'in the title fight' as it's subjective: mine is within two race wins, points-wise. If the gap was sub-50 points, I'd see team orders as more of a necessary evil by default.
It's a little more nuanced than that though and the good news for Norris is that as it now looks possible to hack bigger chunks out of Verstappen's lead than a few races ago, it seems McLaren has reached the point of considering the best approach is to support Norris more overtly, where it can.
How it does that will, I'm sure, be designed to avoid screwing Piastri over as far as possible. Because the constructors' championship is massively important, and McLaren can't afford to drop points with one its cars by favouring the other when Norris's chances are more of a long shot than the team's.
It still feels too risky to impose anything specific on opening laps beyond 'don't do anything stupid', which Piastri doesn't really need to be told.
But Norris getting the priority strategy during the race, and McLaren taking a chance to move Norris ahead without costing Piastri more positions, will probably be implemented where possible. And Piastri will probably be asked to be prepared to cede position as a last resort.
Focus on the realistic prize (and put the onus on Norris)
Ben Anderson
If I were McLaren, I'd either set a clear cut-off point on the calendar for throwing the team's weight behind one driver in the title race - as Ferrari used to do when Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen were team-mates - or I'd simply wait until Piastri is mathematically out of contention and do it '1990s style'.
McLaren's laser focus needs to be on the constructors' championship. Even before Red Bull got itself tangled up in a total mess of its own making, Sergio Perez was a weak-enough link to make that goal feasible. With eight races (and three sprints) to go it now looks like McLaren's to lose.
So to that end you need Piastri fully motivated to extract the very best performance he can from himself each weekend.
That's going to become more difficult if you arbitrarily force him to become a support act to Norris - especially if Piastri is outperforming Norris on a given weekend, as has happened in three of the past four races now.
Piastri’s driving too well for it to be a fair call by McLaren to order his subservience to Norris from now on. Norris really needs to be at his Zandvoort level every race to force McLaren's hand, but that's not happening at the moment.
And even the 62-point gap Norris still needs to close down after Monza is going to require some serious capitulation from Red Bull and Verstappen to become a complete turnaround.
Red Bull is clearly struggling, but reliability is pretty strong across the grid now and Verstappen isn't going to be finishing sixth every weekend from here on out. If he was, then this whole McLaren team orders conversation might be a different order of magnitude more important.
Norris becoming drivers' champion in 2024 is still a pipe dream at this stage ultimately - especially so when the competitive spread among the top four teams is now so close that Ferrari and Mercedes are more than capable of taking points off Red Bull AND McLaren at any given race.
And Norris readily admits he hasn't driven consistently at a level deserving of a world championship anyway - so there's no point wasting too much energy on it really.
Focus on wrapping up the constructors' championship for McLaren, then start 2025 with a car this good from race one. At that point, it should then be 'game-on' for both drivers.
Wait for the street circuits
Glenn Freeman
The drivers' championship is definitely on for Norris, but I can see why McLaren hasn't pulled the team orders trigger yet.
In an ideal world, you'd wait until the next two street races are out of the way and take stock in the next big break in the F1 calendar. Right now we're at the two-thirds stage of the season, and if McLaren thinks that's too early, I get it. There's also the chance for chaos in Baku and Singapore, and that could result in wild swings in either direction in the championship battle.
But if things go roughly to the form book in those two races, Red Bull should have a pretty miserable time. Then it's up to Norris to prove he deserves the full weight of McLaren behind him. He needs to beat Piastri conclusively to show he's ready to win McLaren's first title since 2008.
Otherwise, McLaren could be forgiven for thinking that if it's going to have to keep moving Piastri aside, is it really worth the effort?
Micromanagement risks backfiring
Edd Straw
Stage-managing grand prix victories and championship bids is not easy unless you have a big performance advantage. There have been occasions, in Hungary and at Zandvoort, when McLaren had such an edge but not at other times.
Monza was one such example. That's why any such management, or whatever terrible name you want to give to your racing rules, imposed must be light-touch and uncomplicated.
It's easy to say 'control the start, fan out, block the road and hold position' and endlessly worry about what order your cars finish in but that can so easily backfire and cause needless complications.
It's also more straightforward to achieve when you have a driver who is clearly superior and one who is only an occasional thorn in the side of their team-mate.
McLaren does not have that luxury, which is in many ways to its benefit. What matters is the team's position and the phase of the race at Monza where there was the potential to intervene to protect that cause was in the second stint.
Norris was motivated to chase and Piastri to stay clear. The feeling was that it had the race under control and Ferrari's one-stop threat wasn't taken seriously enough, quickly enough.
Maybe things would have been different had McLaren ensured both drivers protected the front-left tyre as much as possible, effectively cooling their battle, or maybe not, but it should have been in the equation.
Therefore you cannot have a blanket policy. 'Papaya rules' haven't been fully laid out but appear to boil down to 'don't drive into each other and race fairly'. They also need to include the scope to call off such a battle in key phases of the race that might let others in.
As for the question of favouring Norris in all circumstances, he needs his title challenge to be more credible first.
Had the McLaren positions been reversed on the two occasions Piastri finished directly ahead, Norris would only be 10 points further up the road. Far more than that have been left on the table for other reasons. Even then, he would still be 52 points behind.
That's why McLaren's wider priority should be the bigger picture. There may come a time when it just directly favours Norris but the current priority is ensuring it makes the most of every opportunity.
The team is still going through a process of becoming battle-hardened and maximising its results is the top priority. Doing so will also mean a run at the drivers' championship could come into view.
The greater good argument applies to the drivers' championship too. Norris has closed the gap to Verstappen at glacial pace in recent months and too many opportunities have been missed. It would be dangerous and arrogant for McLaren to focus primarily on the drivers' championship at a point where it needs to up its overall win-rate.
So make the rules clear, concise and, above all, prioritise winning races when it is in a condition do so. Then, in the closing stages of a season, it may have to make Piastri support Norris.
What it can't do is try to stage manage it race after race. The only way that happens is if the driver concerned does the heavy lifting and makes it only very rarely necessary.
McLaren's brought this on itself
Gary Anderson
McLaren has got itself into this intra-team battle by itself. It's employed two drivers at more or less the same stage in their careers, both of whom want poles and wins.
Just looking at Hungary and Monza, basically as far as Norris is concerned he has lost out on something like 10 points whereas had his and Piastri's finishing orders been reversed he would have gained those and the team's constructors' championship points would be exactly the same.
I'm sure there are other occasions where Norris could have gained a few points too but any other time before the summer break would have been far too early to be applying any sort of team orders.
If we look back through the years it's not difficult to see that ruthless drivers are winning drivers.
Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Sebastian Vettel - the list is endless. Anyone who raced against Senna will tell you that when you saw that yellow helmet in your mirrors you might as well give in as you knew he was going to pass you anyway, and we all know what happened when Senna and Prost were in the same team. His philosophy was that he had to beat everyone else, team-mate or not.
On the other side of the equation, we had the Michael Schumacher-Ferrari days. He was a clear number one and all of his team-mates knew that was how it was before signing. He deserved that respect, but on some occasions it was questionable.
I am not a lover of team orders or in fact a number one driver status so I would like to see a ding-dong battle going down to the last lap, then if a driver is fighting for a championship and his team-mate is ahead of him swap them. That way, as long as there is no other car between them nothing is lost and potentially a lot is gained.
I think doing it that way would show who really was the best on the day and who can see the bigger picture, and it would also be up to the driver who is being let through to decide if that is the way he potentially wants to win the championship.
Both Norris and Piastri are fast drivers, however I think Piastri has that more aggressive streak when it comes to wheel-to-wheel battles. In the end, that will pay dividends when it comes to a championship battle.
The one thing in all this is that we need to remember who Oscar Piastri’s manager is: yes, it's Mark Webber - the same Mark Webber who on quite a few occasions when he drove alongside Sebastian Vettel felt he was shafted by Red Bull.
I am sure team orders and being a number two would have come up when he was negotiating Piastri's contract at McLaren, so it might not be as easy as the team just implementing them without their blessings.
Don't underestimate who Norris is up against
Jack Benyon
Saying that other champions wouldn't have needed as much help as Norris might to seal a title is too imprecise for me; the situation is too complicated for sweeping generalisations.
The fact is Piastri is performing at an incredibly high level, perhaps even equal to Norris, and that the Schumachers, Hamiltons, Vettels and so on of days gone by have rarely faced that level of competition in-house.
This year is also complicated further by the fact that the McLaren became by far the quickest car way into the season after a dominant start by its rival Red Bull. That kind of swing isn't normal.
Yes, Norris might need more help than champions of days gone by, but because he is the only one with a realistic shot and has been since McLaren got its car right, it has to favour him. If it started the year with the best car it wouldn't be trying to overturn a deficit to Red Bull and could let the two drivers race it out.
Sadly for Piastri, he's not really in the fight. He's closer to Norris than Norris is to Verstappen in the points, but has less of a chance to take points away in the same car.
If McLaren wants a drivers' title to go with its constructors' honours, then it needs to back Norris.
Next year, if it has the best car, we can find out then who is the best between Norris and Piastri. At the moment, it's irrelevant as Piastri has little hope. It's got one horse in the race, so back it!
And other champions with worse team-mates wouldn't have had to deal with Piastri (or their team-mate) being ahead in some of these scenarios, and therefore wouldn't need them moving out of the way. That shouldn’t be a blotch on Norris's CV in comparison.
The harmony's worth sacrificing
Charley Williams
Winning the drivers' and constructors' titles is such a rare opportunity and you never know when that chance is going to come around again. Currently, McLaren is sacrificing its chances of taking home both titles for the sake of maintaining fairness and harmony between its drivers.
In recent years, the relationships between McLaren drivers have been among fans' favourites.
Norris and Carlos Sainz were a media dream; Norris and Daniel Ricciardo were good friends despite any made-up animosity; and, for the past 20 months, we have watched Norris and Piastri's relationship bloom.
However, as podiums and victories have become more frequent, an inevitable shift in their dynamic has become noticeable: from team-mates to rivals.
McLaren created this situation when it signed two top-tier drivers and stood by its approach to not have a standout number one - so only it can dig itself out of this.
If it continues to prioritise the 'sunshine and papaya’ way of operating over the ruthless mentality that a championship-calibre team needs to win, it'll lose essential points to Verstappen in the chase for the drivers' championship with the one McLaren driver who stands a chance of winning it - Norris.
Yes, winning both championships is a pipe dream, but it's one worth chasing.
