Tense moments between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. There will be consequences for Lando Norris, as McLaren has judged him responsible after analyzing his maneuver against Oscar Piastri at the start of the last Singapore Grand Prix. This is how the United States Grand Prix weekend begins in Austin, with a possible confrontation between the two drivers in the papaya (or rather silver-papaya) garage. The team wall is trying to stop it from escalating by enforcing the so-called “papaya rules”, the internal rules of engagement that have so far limited direct fighting at the front and shown a certain amount of team intervention.
Oscar Piastri speaks out
Oscar Piastri also spoke about the issue during Thursday’s press conference at the Circuit of The Americas. “I think the talks we had in Singapore were very productive for everyone involved, and the conclusion was that what happened there is not how we want to race as a team. Lando took responsibility for what he did. But that’s now in the past, and I don’t think our racing rules will change because of it. The papaya rules we have at McLaren? In the end, we put those in place for a reason, and there’s no reason to change them now. The matter has been resolved, and we’re looking to the future.”
However, it is not at all clear what kind of “consequences” Lando Norris was referring to when he explicitly mentioned them. “We have to race against nine other teams and eighteen other drivers,” added Oscar Piastri. “We don’t want to reveal anything sensitive about our team. I think it’s only fair to keep that to ourselves, because we don’t want to give the other teams an advantage by revealing what could happen. But we’ll try to race as best as we can, within what we consider acceptable as a team. That’s really all we can do, but of course, in the last race, I wasn’t very happy with how things went.”
“The team decided that it wasn’t an acceptable first lap, and we addressed the situation,” Oscar Piastri concluded while talking about his teammate Norris.
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