McLaren Blame Stupid Safety Car for Qatar Fumble and Confusion
Strategists claim “There’s nothing in the Papaya Rules for this.”
QATAR—McLaren has officially pinned its Qatar Grand Prix meltdown on the “stupid Safety Car,” insisting the team was left helpless, confused, and unprepared because, according to internal documents, “there’s nothing in the Papaya Rules for this.”
Team principal Andrea Stella admitted the oversight minutes after the checkered flag. “We study everything. Tire wear, fuel loads, track evolution, lunar cycles, humidity when Lando is in a good mood. But an early Safety Car? Absolutely not. That situation is simply not one you can prepare for.”
The Papaya Rules, McLaren’s secretive in-house strategy bible, allegedly contain over 756 pages of guidance but almost none of it pertains to a common safety car. One engineer described the rules as “a masterpiece,” but acknowledged that “they do not really help much during real-life races.”
Multiple team members confirmed that panic set in the moment race control deployed the Safety Car. The strategists opened their laptops, flipped through laminated papaya-colored pages, and found nothing but a section titled “Unexpected Situations” with only one bullet point: “Help Lando win but not the other driver.”
Oscar Piastri appeared baffled by the team’s meltdown. “I asked what the plan was,” he said. “But I knew what the plan was, it’s the same as always. Not the right one.”
McLaren now promises an internal review and plans to update the Papaya Rules to include a new chapter titled “Safety Cars, What They Are” and a second chapter titled “And What They Do.”
Until then, the team maintains the Qatar chaos was unavoidable.
After all, as one strategist put it, “How can you plan for something that happen that often?”