i have no stake in this but i don’t think people truly understand why oscar was so upset. it wasn’t really about the fact that norris and him made contact, it wasn’t super clean but that is part of racing. he’s frustrated because mclaren are constantly preaching about fairness to the point of making him switch post the pit stop mistake and give his teammate a tow to get out of q1 literally two races before in monza. it doesn’t seem very fair when it’s always so won sided. oscar also got publicly reprimanded on the radio for his ambitious move in austria even though there was no contact while lando basically went ahead and had no message telling him to keep it clean. it’s the one sided nature of the precedent thats truly unfair and honestly, i respect his frustrations.
long reply sorry op but i'm looking at this situation now after calming down a bit because i like both lando and oscar and maybe i don't like the situations mclaren puts them in, this is the best way to handle two fast drivers
i understand why it seems like papaya rules working only for lando's success - it always seems like that when you like one driver and everything seems not fair to him
to be honest, at monza, it wasn't the team that asked lando to pit oscar first, it was lando who suggested it when the team ordered him to pit in the correct order, and obviously lando wasn't sacrificing himself to protect his rival from an undercut, he decided that was the best strategy because he wasn't at risk of an undercut and could benefit from a late sc. it's not bad that lando wanted that btw but let's not sell it as something it isn't. oscar had nothing to do with that decision, he was just another factor that the team considered later.
there are already about three races where lando, despite qualifying behind oscar, ends up ahead due to some team decision, so from an objective point of view, this seems unfair, because if they have the rule of giving strategic priority to the driver who qualifies better, then what is happening here 🤷♀️ In hungary, stella said after the race that from then on the drivers would have different strategies, but they never try something different when it's oscar who is behind lando.
it’s not that mclaren has to favor oscar because he’s the leader right now, it would be absurd with the small gap he has over lando, what they need to do is be consistent with their own rules or eliminate them altogether, if hard racing is allowed i don’t understand why they kept scolding oscar every time he tried to overtake lando or why they ended up forcing him to apologize for the move he made in monza last year, you have to consider that at that time there were no rules, the team hadn’t even ordered oscar to be careful (it was one of the things that bothered me the most at the time, the only time rules were needed they didn’t give them). if their principal rule is that their drivers don’t crash, then why is there no consequence when it happens, what’s the point of that rule? adding rules in the middle of the race also looks terrible, if they had already stipulated that slow stops are part of racing, they shouldn’t have asked to swap positions. much of this discussion wouldn't exist if mclaren hadn't done that ridiculous thing.
the idea of them asking for a swap here in singapore seemed ridiculous to me (with any other driver this incident would be a nothingburger), but the idea of asking one of your drivers to let the other pass because he had a slow pit stop is just as ridiculous, and mclaren had no shame in doing that.
last year i was pissed off because the team didn't back lando properly (i genuinely wanted them to fight for the wdc), but you can argue that it was a long shot and they didn't want to make a fuss over something almost impossible. however, this year their decisions can influence the final result or be an effective way to demoralize oscar
