Papaya rules reset: Piastri explains McLaren’s 2026 plan

Oscar Piastri has made one thing crystal clear ahead of the 2026 Formula 1 campaign: McLaren’s bright orange cars may fight fiercely on track, but they will still fight as a team.

The Australian star insists the squad’s much-debated internal racing code – the infamous “Papaya Rules” – isn’t being scrapped, just sharpened, polished, and perhaps given a slightly less headache-inducing edge.

After a 2025 season that felt at times like a high-speed chess match between teammates, McLaren’s balancing act between fairness and competitiveness nearly cost them dearly in the drivers’ championship battle against Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

Fans watched nervously as Lando Norris and Piastri traded positions, points, and occasionally patience, all under the banner of “race fair, don’t crash.”

The phrase “Papaya Rules” became both slogan and lightning rod – a reminder of McLaren’s commitment to equality, but also shorthand for moments when equality looked suspiciously like indecision.

Papaya, But With a Twist

Despite suggestions late last year that the phrase itself might be fading, the philosophy is not. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has doubled down, making it clear that the team’s core values are not up for negotiation – only their execution is.

“Like anything that we approach at McLaren, we go through a thorough process of review such that we can see where the opportunities are to improve,” said Stella, speaking in Woking on Wednesday.

“This was the same for what we call the racing principles and the way we go racing and internal competition.

“We got quite a lot of feedback already during the season last year. We had conversations after the season, and we are having conversations pretty much as we speak now.

“All this has led us to reaffirm fundamentally that the concepts of fairness, integrity, equal opportunities, sportsmanship — they are all fundamental for the team, for Lando and for Oscar.

“They are reaffirmed. They are confirmed and consolidated, if anything.”

In other words: the rulebook stays, but the margins get tidied. The message from McLaren’s leadership is less about restriction and more about refinement – not taming their drivers, but synchronizing them.

Rivalry, Refined – Not Removed

Piastri, who spent much of last season leading the standings before a late-year slide saw him finish third overall, knows firsthand how thin the line is between healthy rivalry and internal chaos.

Entering his fourth year alongside Norris, he expects the dynamic to evolve.

“Yeah, it will look different,” said Piastri. “For me, as Andrea said, streamlining is a wise decision to make. We probably caused some headaches for ourselves that we didn’t need to at points last year.

“I think as a general principle and a general kind of way of going racing, it does bring a lot of positives with it. It’s just how do we refine that to try and keep it to just positives, basically.

“There is always a lot more made out about it than actually happens, and there are a lot of hypothetical situations and a lot of people that kind of think without knowing the complete inner workings. A lot of things appear differently to how they actually are.

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“Some tweaks for sure this year, but I think it’s pretty clear that we still want to go racing as much as a team as we can.”

The key word is team. McLaren isn’t looking to muzzle competition; it’s looking to choreograph it. The goal is two drivers pushing the limit without pushing each other off the circuit — a delicate dance at 300 km/h.

Lessons From the Highs – and the Hurt

For Piastri personally, 2025 was both a confidence surge and a reality check. Leading the championship for much of the year only to lose the advantage in Mexico City and never recover left its mark, but also sharpened his perspective.

“Some of them were nice lessons to learn, some of them were tougher lessons to learn,” said Piastri.

“In terms of performance and the peaks that I had last year, was, firstly, a nice confidence boost and kind of statement for myself that when I get things right and maximise my potential, that I can be a very strong competitor.

“Some of the lessons, in the back half of the year especially were very different in nature.”

Those “different” lessons may be exactly what fuel a more mature, more calculated McLaren partnership in 2026.

The papaya-colored cars will still race wheel-to-wheel, sparks still likely to fly — but the team hopes those sparks light victories, not internal fires.

If 2025 was the year of tension, 2026 is shaping up to be the year of tuning: same rivalry, same ambition, just with the edges sanded down and the teamwork turned up. In McLaren’s garage, papaya isn’t going stale – it’s just being seasoned.

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