The Schumacher/Alonso element Norris is missing that would help McLaren’s team orders headache

McLaren has one of the best problems any team can have in Formula 1. It’s got two highly-rated, hard-charging drivers capable of winning races and, it seems, challenging for the championship.

Right now, although without the ugly animosity and crashes, Lando Norris-Oscar Piastri feels more Ayrton Senna-Alain Prost than Lewis Hamilton-Jenson Button.

Full credit to McLaren for getting to this position: it now has F1’s best car, capable of defeating Red Bull’s RB20 on its happy hunting ground on Monza's straights and has secured arguably the championship’s best and most balanced driver line-up.

On this, there’s plenty of competition from Hamilton-George Russell at Mercedes, while at Ferrari, although not something that will even be relevant for much longer, how Charles Leclerc produced that thrilling second Monza win showed that Carlos Sainz can’t quite match his highs well enough.

Leclerc’s drive to glory on Sunday in front of the Tifosi again contained plenty of nous and precision he often doesn’t get credited for showing – see 33 straight laps in the 1m23s to end the race, even with Piastri bearing down late on.

As much as McLaren hates it internally, how Leclerc defeated it last weekend means there is currently an unrelenting focus on its team orders stance, plus how it handles that going forward.

Reading between the lines of team principal Andrea Stella’s “we need to be better at capitalising the opportunities that Red Bull at the moment seem to offer”, it seems like McLaren will now enact a stricter approach - one that favours Norris in his hunt to close the now 62-point gap to Max Verstappen in the drivers’ standings, given it feels the drivers' title is now winnable.

McLaren appears set to put all its effort behind Norris' title bid

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

But there was another big question on this front leaving Monza, one wrapped within the gigantic Prancing Horse shields the Tifosi unveiled underneath podium to sing Leclerc’s successes. Did the lack of pre-Italian GP McLaren team orders, and Piastri's subsequent second chicane attack that so nearly had Norris spinning a la Sebastian Vettel at the same spot in 2018, cost a 1-2?

Here we must enter speculation's realm, but there's enough evidence to suggest it did.

First up, there's what came to be a key factor in how Leclerc won the race. He gently bedded in his second stint hards and so was able to maintain them when it became clear the one-stopper was on to the finish.

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Careful management in a stint’s early laps through Lesmo 2, Ascari and Parabolica meant the front-left retained enough rubber initially to hold on even as the surface tore in the graining phase. On Leclerc’s car, as Piastri claimed the graining “cleared up”, what was actually happening was that his discipline in those early stint tours and stunningly consistent pace meant he made it home.

Had McLaren held its 1-2 for more than just the first third of lap one, it could’ve controlled the pace

The graining didn’t clean up, as if it had it would’ve sucked out tyre life through the carcass heating up and losing performance. That this didn’t happen is evidenced in Leclerc’s astonishing consistency to the finish.

But if Leclerc had been running third in stint one and not been able to nip by Norris in the aftermath of Piastri’s attack (it’s worth noting here just how far the McLarens were ahead of the lead Ferrari approaching the della Roggia chicane), then attacking in undercutting either MCL38 becomes Ferrari's most sensible strategic option.

That’s even though it was favouring the one-stop strategy pre-race, as no one knew how the graining factor on the hards was going to turn out.

Again, had Leclerc been chasing from third with Ferrari’s closely-matched package for McLaren here, he would've carried on encountering the degradation drop-off factor he showed at the end of the real first stint as he continued to chase in the dirty air.

Piastri could have been deployed tactically to hamper Leclerc's Monza progress

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

His times at this stage versus Piastri dropped by 0.5s a lap in the four tours to Leclerc’s first service, where Norris closed to within DRS range. This also would've been exacerbated in the later stint (or, more likely, stints for Leclerc) by the need to stress the left front early attacking on the undercut to make a jump.

Had McLaren held its 1-2 for more than just the first third of lap one, it could’ve controlled the pace. Or perhaps even used its second car to bottle up Leclerc while the leader slinked clear.

It could also have swapped its drivers if Piastri continued to lead as he really did, but ahead of Norris, but that's by the by here. In hindsight, McLaren knows if its drivers had indeed held back, the one-stop was possible for the Papaya squad.

This is based on Stella saying: “If we had driven the car like we drive for a one-stop, even if we see the graining on the hard tyres, we don't get too worried, and we just seem to try and respond to Leclerc, then I think the victory could have been possible”.

Controlling the race pace would've helped on this front. Don’t forget how Norris currently retains an edge on tyre management over Piastri, which he couldn’t show with the additional sliding from running in dirty air in third initially, then second in his middle stint.

The biggest unknown on whether McLaren really did lose a 1-2 last Sunday is the front tyre graining factor. This was what had McLaren most concerned – Stella said: “When we deal with front graining, we tend to be on the aggressive side” – and so was reflected in its rear wing level.

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McLaren doesn’t have Ferrari's 'Monza special' lowest-drag setting too, and so was burning its fronts through those few fast corners here thanks to its added downforce exacerbating understeer needed to protect the rears – a more significant challenge at Monza in 2024 with the asphalt changes. This could have still undone McLaren’s 1-2 hopes even without the team orders debate drama.

McLaren's tyre usage meant it couldn't risk a one-stop plan

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

This extended into the final laps where, once it became clear Leclerc was going to hold on, McLaren could have ordered Piastri – who was also given the “Papaya rules” warning when exiting close to Norris at his first pitstop – to pull over and hand his team-mate three extra points to cut Verstappen’s advantage to 59.

McLaren didn’t because it was hoping that keeping Piastri flat out might force Leclerc into one of the devastating lock-ups the team had witnessed in FP2, which also encouraged it into favouring the two-stop approach overall.

Other F1 greats (or not, depending on your stance on the ruthlessness factor across elite sport) surely would’ve been screaming on the radio for the last-lap second-third swap. Think Michael Schumacher or Fernando Alonso.

Ferrari team leaders of the early 2000s and 2010s forced the issue more through their domination elsewhere that practically ensured team orders went their way when required

Norris said afterwards he’s "not here just to beg for someone to let me past". That’s to his credit but could be viewed as a weakness elsewhere.

It's interesting to hear from Stella post-race regarding his experience working as Schumacher’s performance engineer and Alonso’s race engineer at Ferrari. These were periods that covered the Scuderia’s own team orders sagas of those famous eras.

Stella made the point that in these, the “successful driver was successful because he was gaining the success on track”. Ferrari team leaders of the early 2000s and 2010s forced the issue more through their domination elsewhere that practically ensured team orders went their way on the occasions they were required.

So, perhaps Norris should reflect on just why he seemingly isn’t able to be further ahead of Piastri enough and so make the team orders question easier for his team...

Is it too late for McLaren to start issuing team orders?

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images