Papaya Rules: Ruining McLaren?

Author: Melany Aguirre

Many fans have said that McLaren has a clear preference in drivers, has papaya rules fixed this issue or made it worse?

Firstly, what is “Papaya Rules”? Papaya Rules are the set of rules that both the McLaren drivers have to follow (Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri). The main reason for these rules are to keep the peace and keep everything fair, these rules say the drivers should be trying their best but shouldn’t be causing problems (crashing into each other) for the sake of the team.

During the Singapore Grand Prix, these rules were put to the test when on lap one, Lando suddenly bumped into Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri. Oscar and many fans agreed that Lando bumped Oscar into the wall for an advantage. Oscar was upset on the radio saying things like "Mate, that's not fair, that's not fair". Lando received little to no repercussions for this.

The Italian Grand Prix is an example of the rules being executed well, but failing due to a common occurrence. Lando was asked if Oscar could change tyres since Oscar wasn’t going to undercut (taking advantage of getting newer, faster tyres while your opponent has older, slower tyres) Lando. It was going well until Lando had a slow tyre change that let Oscar undercut Lando.

Many have said that when making decisions for the drivers, Oscar has been screwed over more than Lando. An example of this is the fact that Oscar Piastri has dropped down third (from first) in the championship because of poor judgement from Mclaren. Lando has started to lead the championship and Max is creeping up behind him. This is crazy because when Oscar was leading the championship, he had a 34-point lead on Lando and Lando had a 104-point lead over Max.

Both drivers have pointed out their frustrations with the rule. It’s gotten so bad to the point that fans have decided to pick sides between the drivers. The way this is going, it seems that arguments might happen over driver preferences. These issues might even break McLaren apart from the inside.