McLaren has revealed that it “would like to avoid using team orders” to guard against the threat that Max Verstappen could pose in the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix.
The Woking-based squad’s drivers locked out the front row in Barcelona as Oscar Piastri charged to pole position with a two-tenth margin to team-mate Lando Norris.
But while McLaren is tipped to possess the advantage again in race trim, Piastri and Norris are not discounting the challenge that Verstappen could mount from third.
“It’s a long run down to Turn 1 – normally always interesting,” Norris cautioned. “I mean, we’ve got a lot of quick guys behind us, so we won’t count them out.”
Last season’s race saw Verstappen capitalise on the long 579-metre run down to Turn 1 to make a pass on Norris that helped him to beat a quicker McLaren package.
Piastri was also on the receiving end at Imola last month as the Dutchman completed an audacious pass at the start en route to claiming his most recent win to date.
McLaren boss Andrea Stella, however, has denied those previous incidences could encourage the team to enforce tactics to protect against a repeat this time around.
“Difficult to say in terms of how the race will unfold, who’s going to be the best in terms of keeping tyre degradation under control,” Stella told media including Motorsport Week.
“I talk about tyre degradation, but I want to give you a little bit of a sense.
“When you’ve done 20 laps on a tyre, you might have lost 2.5 seconds just of tyre degradation. So if you go onto a new set, you go 2.5 seconds faster.
“So that’s why strategy becomes a factor, because if you go and you do an undercut onto new tyres, very likely you’re going to pass the car.
“But you may remember last year with both cars we stayed very patient, and we stayed out such that we were approaching the race in what is called more of a deterministic way.
“So you don’t stop too early and then too early, and then you have a long stint to go, and this paid off. So there’s several strategic opportunities.
“I would like to hope that our qualities of keeping the rear tyres under control will pay off tomorrow, but we have seen definitely some competitive long runs by Ferrari and Max.
“The aspect as to whether this requires team orders, in general we would like to avoid using team orders to try and control the race.
“Hopefully the quality of the drivers and the quality of the car will take care of the result itself.”
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