Stella defends McLaren letting Norris and Piastri race at Monza
NXTbets Pro | Published On: September 9, 2026
Stella defends call
Andrea Stella stood by McLaren’s decision to let Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri race late in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, saying the team had clear reasons to keep the fight on. Stella said both McLaren cars were on the same tires and in similar condition, so the team chose to let its drivers race rather than step in and freeze the order. He also said Norris had to get by Piastri before he could turn his attention to Max Verstappen, which tied the intra-team battle to McLaren’s broader fight on track. Stella framed the call as a racing decision based on the state of the cars and the track situation. He said McLaren likely had little chance of defending against Verstappen, who passed both McLarens and finished third. That left the team weighing whether any intervention would have changed the outcome ahead. Stella did not present the move as a mistake at the time. He treated it as a choice made with both drivers in comparable shape and with room to race for position. McLaren’s response after the checkered flag was to revisit the call, but Stella made it clear the team believed there was logic behind letting the contest continue.
Norris, Piastri battle
The fight between Norris and Piastri turned into the defining McLaren moment at Monza. Norris first got by Piastri on lap 48, but Piastri answered and the pair swapped positions again. Norris then reclaimed fourth on the final lap. The move came with drama, as Norris briefly put two wheels on the grass and complained over the radio. He said Piastri had forced him off track during the race. That sequence gave the team a tense finish to a battle it had allowed to play out on merit. Stella later said a review found the incident was much more benign than it felt in the moment, which matched the view inside McLaren that the duel was hard but still fair. The exchange also showed how tightly matched the two cars were at that stage of the race. Neither driver could pull clear for long, and each response brought the positions back into play. For McLaren, the result was a fourth-place finish for Norris and fifth for Piastri, a team outcome built around a direct head-to-head scrap rather than a simple procession to the line. The late-race back-and-forth made the internal battle as important as the fight with anyone else on track.
McLaren plans review
McLaren said it would review its “terms of engagement” after the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, and Stella said that review would look at whether letting the drivers race cost the team a better chance against Verstappen. That question sat at the center of McLaren’s next step. The team had to balance the value of giving Norris and Piastri room to race with the possibility that a different call might have produced a better result against the car ahead. Stella said the team would examine that choice closely, which made the post-race review more than a routine debrief. It was a check on whether McLaren handled the moment in the best way possible given how close the two cars were and how quickly Verstappen was able to move past them. Norris later softened his view of the duel as well. He said he no longer believed Piastri had done anything wrong and described the exchange as a “good tough fight.” That left McLaren with a clear finish and a clear review point. The team then turned to the question of whether its decision to let the drivers race matched its larger goals on a day when Verstappen still finished ahead of both McLarens.
