Christian Horner: McLaren made ‘life complicated for themselves’ with team orders saga

Christian Horner was left confused by McLaren’s decision to pit Lando Norris before Oscar Piastri - a decision which led to the team orders saga at the end of the F1 Hungarian Grand Prix.

McLaren dominated the race at the Hungaroring with Piastri running ahead of Norris.

For the second round of pit stops, McLaren opted to pit Norris first to cover off Lewis Hamilton.

Two laps later, Piastri came in, surrendering track position to his teammate.

While McLaren assured him Norris would give the place back, it took until the closing number of laps before the British driver to back off.

McLaren repeated a number of messages over team radio, urging Norris to slow down before he eventually gave Piastri the race lead.

Speaking after the race in Hungary, where Crash.net are in the paddock, Horner gave his view on the team orders debacle at McLaren.

“They didn’t need to make life that complicated for themselves, they were in a pretty comfortable situation, they chose to pit Lando two laps earlier, which usual practice is, to pit the lead car first, and then they gave themselves a lot of work to do to reset that at the back end of the race,” he said.

“So yeah, that’s obviously their business but they perhaps didn’t need to create that problem.”

He added: “The drivers’ interest versus the team’s interest, there’s always a conflict.”

In a separate interview with Sky, Ted Kravitz referenced ‘Multi 21’ - Red Bull’s famous team orders scandal where Sebastian Vettel refused to listen and overtook teammate Mark Webber.

Kravitz said to Horner: “Nobody mentioned multi-21 today. That was what was going on wasn’t it. Lando was giving it ago. Trying to show he was like Seb… not going to give away.”

Horner replied: “It’s an awkward position. I didn’t understand why they didn’t give Oscar the first pit stop so they put themselves into that position. It was something they discussed pre-race and Lando did what was asked of him.”