David Coulthard calls for McLaren team orders change to avoid driver engineer relationship issue

Former Formula 1 driver David Coulthard has pointed to an issue with how McLaren handles team orders during grands prix.

The Woking outfit's papaya rules became a popular talking point during 2025 as both drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, fought for the drivers' championship. Norris and Piastri were free to battle it out on track with the one provision that they kept it clean, but there were a few instances where the team enforced team orders.

Coulthard argued during an appearance on The Red Flags Podcast that the team orders should have been issued by team principal Andrea Stella rather than the driver's race engineer.

"The only criticism I would have is that I don’t like when the engineer - because that bond between the driver and the engineer, for me, has to be absolute. I would liken it to: if you guys are in the trenches together and someone blows the whistle back in the day to go out and fight the enemy, you’ve got to know that you’re both going at the same time," he explained.

"You know, [they’re] not hiding behind you, and you’re not hiding; you’re there shoulder to shoulder. So that relationship between driver and engineer has to be unbreakable, that bond.

David Coulthard on the grid during the Sprint

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / LAT Images via Getty Images

"So I think that when they do give ‘move over, don’t race’ type instructions, that should come from the team principal or sporting director. It should not come from the race engineer.

"The driver should absolutely believe that his engineer would say: ‘That’s not my job, my job is to get my driver winning, and I will only give instructions that can help that. But I’m a professional and therefore if there’s an instruction which is going to get my driver to hold position, that has to come from someone else in the team’."

While the papaya rules came under scrutiny in 2025, McLaren went on to win the constructors' championship and drivers' championship with Lando Norris.