Windsor baffled by McLaren's attidude: 'Didn't control their F1 drivers'

After the start, with the Formula 1 field heading for the chicane, Windsor thought McLaren had their act together. Polesitter Norris was leading, with teammate Piastri in his wake. Then, however, what nobody saw coming happened: Piastri executed a masterful overtaking manoeuvre and took the lead. Norris was clearly upset, as this caused the Briton to have a moment that made Charles Leclerc smell blood. This proved crucial to Ferrari's victory later in the race.

Windsor doesn't understand anything about McLaren's choice

"This is the second time that Lando's found himself in a position of having to do something to avoid Oscar," Windsor said in his analysis on YouTube. "Here it was Oscar on the outside and you can see Lando was completely shocked completely caught by surprise. Oscar took the lead of the Italian Grand Prix. I mean what was that all about? What was the risk that was worth taking at that stage of the race with Lando Norris on the Pole and having led out of the first corner?"

He continued: "You would imagine that McLaren again would have had some sort of management control of the drivers, certainly in the early laps and certainly on an outside pass into the second chicane with nothing really yet up to temperature. Now at this point, I've got to say from Oscar Piastri's point of view...what a racer what a move. Cannot criticise him in any way."

Still, Windsor thinks McLaren made a clear mistake by letting the drivers race each other - and later even telling Norris that he could only challenge his teammate "with policy", cloaked in the code words "papaya rules". "Obviously there was nobody at McLaren to say don't race Lando on the first lap around the outside, don't put the cars in risk. Nobody was there to say it to him," the F1 analyst concluded in amazement.

"Piastri went out and he did what a racing driver is supposed to do. It was a really good move from his point of view. From Lando's point of view, it was a scary move and it looked like he was shell-shocked after that and it took away a lot of the wind from Lando's race straight away. Because then he was not only behind Oscar Piastri, which is obviously a drama for him, but he was now behind Leclerc," Windsor continued.

"Now it was Leclerc between the two McLaren Mercedes drivers, which is not a good situation of course because even if they were going to start thinking of applying team orders at the back end of the race given Lando's relatively strong position in the drivers championship now, they wouldn't be able to do it if Leclerc was anywhere near them."

This article has been created in collaboration with Matt Gretton