McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella says the side will aim to avoid using team orders when possible after intervening in the battle between its two drivers in Japan.
Despite losing out at the start, Oscar Piastri regained his position as the lead McLaren on race day at Suzuka when his opening pit stop coincided with a Virtual Safety Car period.
Lando Norris, who had also been held up by the lapped Sergio Perez, emerged 6s behind his team-mate but rapidly closed down Piastri on newer tyres, prompting McLaren to instruct the Australian to move aside to preserve its eventual double podium finish.
Whilst it marked the first time McLaren has imposed an on-track switch of position this year, the Woking squad previously navigated Norris ahead of Piastri by opting to give the former preferential treatment on strategy in the Hungarian and Italian Grands Prix.
When asked to portray the differences between the trio of decisions, Stella told Autosport: “It [Japan] was much, much easier in a way, as those two situations were stressful, especially the one in Monza.
“And when I say stressful, I mean stressful because we created stress between our two drivers, which we could have avoided, really.
“That’s something that we reviewed. It may happen again in the future, but when it is avoidable, we should avoid it.
“In this case, the approach was, let’s see how fast Lando is closing, and let’s see if the overtaking comes naturally.
“When we saw that it doesn’t come so natural, then we asked the drivers to swap, so that we wouldn’t lose race time for both.”
Across the remaining 27 laps, Piastri, who claimed his maiden F1 podium, dropped 16s behind Norris come the chequered flag.
The rookie conceded afterwards he must improve his tyre management, with Stella agreeing that the margin was amplified by Piastri’s severe degradation troubles.
“In a race like this, every lap of tyre that you save, so if you pit one lap later than somebody else, you gain one-tenth,” he explained.
“Lando at that stage pitted six laps later, so his car is automatically six-tenths quicker than the other car.
“Also, in addition to that, I have to say that Lando’s pace was very good in absolute terms. And if anything, we have to look with Oscar at where we could have gained the one or two-tenths overall pace that he seemed to lack compared to Lando.”
McLaren’s first two-car top-three finish in two years saw the British camp close to within 49 points of Aston Martin in the Constructors’ standings with six rounds remaining.
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