Max Verstappen can’t do much with McLaren’s Papaya rules and thinks McLaren has missed an opportunity to win the drivers’ title.
Max Verstappen has dismissed McLaren’s so-called “Papaya Rules” as nonsense and believes that the team should have implemented the instructions to the drivers better in order to have a chance at the 2024 drivers’ championship, which, in his opinion, they definitely could have won.
The “Papaya Rules” are an internal catalog of behavior for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri on how they have to interact with each other on the track. In 2024, the two drivers were often referred to the rules in duels, but Verstappen can’t do much with them.
“What does that even mean, papaya rules? That doesn’t help me at all,” he says to Viaplay. ‘If I heard that from my race engineer, I would just say, ’Just shut up!’”
Although there was a lot of talk about McLaren’s rules of conduct last season, which were also interpreted in favor of Lando Norris in the World Cup fight, Verstappen still can’t really understand them: “What does that mean? You are free to drive.”
“Yes, free driving is good, but for me everything should be much easier and the team should do a better job,” he says, dismissing the idea.
For him, it is clear that McLaren would definitely have had a chance at the drivers’ title, which Verstappen took home for the fourth year in a row, had they executed better. “They had a very good car, but it’s also clear that they still have a lot to learn in order to be consistently at the front,” said the Dutchman.
McLaren may have secured the Constructors’ Championship for the first time since 1998, “but of course they could have prepared much better for the Drivers’ Championship,” says Verstappen, who sees “absolutely 100 percent” missed opportunities at McLaren – and a missed chance for Lando Norris to win the Drivers’ Championship: “Yes, that too. Yes.”
