TOTO WOLFF says McLaren may have put themselves in a sticky situation with their controversial team orders in Monza.
Eyebrows have been raised once again at McLaren’s decision to swap positions between their drivers, with Oscar Piastri this time being told to give a place back to Lando Norris.
McLaren told Oscar Piastri to swap places with Lando Norris late on in the Italian Grand Prix
Late on in the race, Norris suffered a whopping 5.9sec pit stop due to a delay putting on the front left tyre and was then undercut by team-mate Piastri.
But the Aussie was told to give the place BACK to Norris, which he did so reluctantly, grumbling on his team radio.
The Italian fiasco was the opposite of the chaos in Budapest last year when Norris ignored team orders for 17 LAPS to let the Aussie back into the lead.
The British driver had gained the place through a team decision to send him into the pits first.
He was repeatedly told to concede the place but chose not to for 17 laps, only moving over three laps from the end to allow Piastri through for his debut F1 win.
Mercedes boss Wolff was in charge during teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s bitter fight for the world title in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
He said: “There’s no right and there’s no wrong. I’m curious to see how that ends out.
“You set a precedent that is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake? Do you switch them around?
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“But then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver that is trying to catch up lose the points is not fair either.
“I think we are going to get our response of whether there was right today towards the end of the season, when it heats up.”
McLaren’s team order to reverse positions meant that Norris, who had led Piastri comfortably, cut his team-mate’s championship lead to 31 points.
Had Piastri stayed ahead in the race, then Norris would have left Monza 37 points adrift.
It seemed a cruel blow a week after losing 18 points when a freak McLaren car failure cost him second place to race-winner Piastri.
Wolff added: “There’s no clear-cut answer for today. The answer with managing it that way will come towards the end of the season, if it’s going to get more fierce.
“If the team made a mistake, the team inverted positions, an absolutely fair decision.
“On the other side, what is a team mistake? What if next time around the car doesn’t start up and you lose a position or whatever, or the suspension breaks? What do you do then in the next one?
“So you could have a cascade of events or precedents that can be very difficult to manage. But I can only speak of how we found ourselves in this situation back [in] all those years that we had to manage.
“And I think most important is to have a clear strategy. You either go like this or you go the other way around. Either let them race or try to balance it in the most possible fair way.”
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