Lando Norris tackled the very arranged and controversial “papaya rules”, a rumor rule that puts a driver in one advantageous position on another. Speaking of this, Norris cleaned up the air and said that there was no papaya rules in McLaren.
The question of papaya rules has surfaced once again this week after McLaren ordered Piastri to fall back and restore its position to Norris to the 49 years of the Italian race GP. The order of the team came after Norris had a slow stand at the 47 turn, which eradicated his advantage.
To eliminate their error during the stop at the 5.9 -second stand, McLaren ordered the drivers to exchange, after which F1 fraternity was unleashed with speculation concerning papaya rules. However, according to Lando Norris, there is no rule of this type.
“There are no more papaya rules,” Norris told Dazn. “We never had them.
After that, Norris added,
“It looks like for a long time, even if it’s short but it’s something out of my control. I can’t do anything about it. This is not what I want or what the team wants. It makes things complicated and complicated the positions.”
“But that’s what we all have as a team, the two drivers decided that it was the right thing to do if it happened. It had to be corrected. If it had happened to Oscar. We would have done exactly the same,” said the British driver.
At the end of the race, Lando Norris finished in P2, behind the winner of the race Max Verstappen. While his teammate, Oscar Piastri, returned home in P3, ahead of Charles Leclerc and George Russell.
The boss of Lando Norris explained once the papaya rules: “Rating respectfully”
McLaren CEO, Zak Brown, formerly explained the principles behind the controversial and very arranged papaya rules. Explaining the rule, here is what Brown said:
“Do you go respectfully and give yourself enough space and do not touch.”
Formula 1 has known many cases where teammates crashed and erased the work hard by the team this weekend. Max Verstappen against Daniel Ricciardo at GP Azerbaijan 2018, or Nico Rosberg against Lewis Hamilton in the 2016 Spanish GP, are multiple cases.
Consequently, one should not be surprised if McLaren, a team which has two drivers worthy of the championship, has a rule which prevents drivers from crashing. Currently, the Woking -based team runs the manufacturers’ championship with 617 points. Oscar Piastri heads the pilot championship with 324 points ahead of his teammate, Lando Norris (293 points), after 16 races and three sprints.
Published by Sabyasachachi Biswas
