McLaren has won the constructors championship for the second successive year, but these aren’t the victorious circumstances the team would have envisaged during the thick of what is one of the most dominant seasons by a constructor in Formula 1 history.
McLaren was a long way from pole and never threatened for victory. Lando Norris led the way home in third — enough to guarantee the title — but only after he’d barged past Oscar Piastri, who finished close behind in fourth.
Ironically McLaren’s crowning moment has come at what could be the first flashpoint of the title battle between its drivers.
Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.
Piastri had enjoyed a slender advantage over Norris all weekend, but it was the Briton who got the better start from fifth. He was immediately past Andrea Kimi Antonelli off the line to put himself on the apex of turn 1 on Piastri’s inside.
From there Norris was able to pin Piastri onto the kerb at turn 2 and claim the inside for the left-handed turn 3.
But his angle to the turn was too shallow, and he hit the brakes late. He sailed past the apex and nudged Max Verstappen ahead of them, and as he did so he suffered a snap of oversteer that had him thump Piastri towards the wall.
The title leader came perilously close to disaster but was able to continue in fourth.
The core tenet of McLaren’s racing rules — of any team’s rules of engagement — had been breached. Contact between sister cars had been made.
It had a material impact on the outcome of the race — on a night when overtaking proved painfully difficult at the front, Piastri was condemned to fourth behind Norris, Verstappen and winner George Russell.
Piastri, whose, title lead has been reduced for the third race in succession, wasn’t happy — to say the least.
Oscar GRILLS McLaren after Norris clash | 00:58
WHAT DID PIASTRI SAY?
“Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way or what’s the go there?” Piastri said immediately.
His view of the incident perhaps lacked vision of Norris’s collision with Verstappen, but when informed the team wouldn’t take any action because of that initial contact, he had an argument ready to go for that too.
“That’s not fair. I’m sorry, that’s not fair,” he said. “If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate, then that’s a pretty sh*t job of avoiding.”
Piastri’s logic is understandable but perhaps even clearer if you were to imagine the same incident had bigger consequences.
Imagine, for example, if the entire situation had taken place 30 centimetres closer to the barrier, from where Norris’s thump puts Piastri in the barrier and out of the race.
The cardinal rule is no teammate contact precisely for this reason — that even minor contact in an open-wheeler can be disastrous.
Piastri had seen his race flash before his eyes because of his teammate’s action — and had seen his teammate get away with it.
Despite his in-car concern, Piastri was predictably more measured in his post-race media debrief — understandable particularly in the context that this was his team’s title-winning night.
“I think the main thing is the two cars coming together is never what we want,” he said. “I’ll go and have a look at it in more detail and come to my conclusion then.”
When he does look back at the incident, he might have cause to feel aggrieved to learn that Norris wasn’t so much as cautioned over radio for putting his teammate at risk of crashing out of the race.
That stands in stark contrast with other close battles this year during which Piastri has been warned moves he’s made have come close to breaching the agreed racing rules — for example, in Austria and Hungary, where he was told his big lunges were too risky.
Of course there is a key difference between Singapore and those races. Previously Piastri was the chasing driver and in a position to try on another move. In Singapore Norris was already ahead and wouldn’t need to launch another overtake.
He was asked whether he felt the team was biased towards Norris.
“No,” was his clear answer.
He was asked whether he felt the team had been fair to him and Norris on balance.
“I think ultimately yes,” he insisted. “There’s obviously been some difficult situations for the whole team.
“We’ve obviously spoken about a number of things. Could things have been better at certain points? Yes. But ultimately it’s a learning process with the whole team.
“I’m very, very happy that the intentions are very well meaning, so I have absolutely no concerns about that.
“There have been some tough situations this year, and this is another one.”
Bezzecchi storms back to win thriller! | 01:24
WHAT DID NORRIS SAY?
Norris unsurprisingly was of a different opinion.
The Briton’s perspective is that this was a straightforward and minor first-lap incident unworthy of attention.
“I just had a big gap on the inside of Oscar,” he explained. “It was just very close. It was still slippery because it was still damp in places and drying out.
“I think I just clipped the back of Max’s car, and that’s just given me a little correction [into Piastri], but then that was it.
“The aggression there and the forward thinking paid off.”
Asked if he’d been too aggressive with his teammate, his view was clear.
“I hit Max, so I wasn’t aggressive on my teammate,” he justified.
He was similarly forthright when asked whether putting Piastri in the position he did transgressed McLaren’s racing rules.
“I don’t think there was anything wrong that I did,” he argued. “Of course I misjudged a little bit how close I was to Max, but that’s racing. Nothing happened otherwise.
“I’m sure I still would have just ended up ahead of Oscar anyway because I was on the inside and he would have had the dirty side of the track on the outside.
“I need to go review it of course. I need to look at things and see if there was something I could have done better.
“The last thing I want is to make contact with my teammate, especially because all I get is then questions from [the media].
“I’ll see what I can do better next time, but the FIA obviously thought it was fine and the team did too, so that’s it.”
The stewards noted the incident almost immediately but took just a minute to dismiss it as not warranting further investigation.
The team appeared to follow the stewards’ lead in discussing the incident but deciding against intervening.
Certainly the regulations are on Norris’s side. While you can ask whether the incident met the internal team rules based on what could have happened, the regulations only deal with what actually happened, and minor contact that did no lasting damage to other cars on the first lap isn’t worthy of a penalty.
You can sympathise with Norris too in the context of his season.
The championship challenger has been criticised repeatedly for lacking the killer instinct characteristic of F1’s greats — of lacking aggression and incisiveness in battle.
Well, here he was taking his chances and gaining places, doing exactly what he’s been told he has to do if he’s to overhaul Piastri for the title.
“Anyone on the grid would have done exactly the same thing as what I did,” he said. “I think if you fault me for just going up the inside and putting my car on the inside of a big gap, then I think you shouldn’t be in Formula 1.”
‘Car didn’t have enough in it for pole’ | 01:03
WHAT DID THE TEAM SAY?
Team boss Andrea Stella, originally an engineer by trade, has set an analytical, cool-headed tone during his time at the top of McLaren.
His approach has been remarkably effective at keeping a lid on the championship fight this year. Tensions have been kept so under control that it’s sometimes seemed as though there was no title battle happening at all this season.
Unsurprisingly he took no sides after the race, but his post-race comments were notable for the line he attempted to cautiously toe.
On the one hand, he defended the call made by the pit wall not to intervene on the grounds that Norris hadn’t been directly racing Piastri at the time.
“In terms of having a contact between our two drivers, this contact is in reality a consequence of another racing situation that happened between Lando and Verstappen,” he said.
“Definitely, because there was a contact itself, this will lead to a review and some good conversations, but in the moment, we thought that this contact was more a result of another racing situation.”
But on the other hand, he cautioned that it wouldn’t be until the team debriefed the incident that he could be sure that the call was right. He also said it wasn’t enough to simply use what might popularly be called the Senna defence — that a racing driver is required to go for a gap that exists.
“In terms of going for the gap, I think it’s just a bit too much of a coarse approach,” he said. “We need to retain a higher degree of sophistication and detail, because there are so many elements that you need to take into account, and we need to make sure that we don’t become too quick in drawing conclusions.
“We need to be accurate, because there’s a lot at stake, and the lot at stake is not only the championship points but also the trust of our drivers in the way we operate as a team. This is, if anything, even more foundational than the points themselves.
“We will apply all the accuracy that is required in this case and all the conversations that are needed.
“We will have the good conversations like we had, for instance, after Canada. This review gave us the opportunity to come back, like we said at the time, even more united and stronger as a team.
“We will see if there’s any learning and anything that we need to fine-tune in terms of our approach, but I think this will just lead to some good conversations.”
FAIR’S FAIR
It’s important to keep this incident in context.
Norris did not break any racing regulation. He did not race unfairly. He did not even take, in a general sense, too much risk. Contact was minor between him and both Verstappen and Piastri.
The complicating factor is the way he raced his teammate, who is also his title rival.
McLaren has gone out of its way to try to create as level a playing field as possible. Stella has talked about creating a set of principles by which the team could keep the fight fair.
But that’s meant several times this year the team has found itself intervening in the on-track action in a bid to maintain that sense of fairness.
It started at the first round of the season, when it prevented Piastri from overtaking Norris in Melbourne because there were backmarkers ahead who had to be lapped and because there was rain approaching on the radar — remarkable conservatism.
The previous flashpoint was in Monza, where Piastri was told to hand second place to Norris after the Briton had suffered a slow pit stop.
The team ably justified both of these — and other — decisions through the year, but every time the pit wall has intervened, a new precedent has been added to the so-called papaya rules.
Every precedent is a new complication when the drivers find themselves sharing the track.
For example, at last year’s Italian Grand Prix Piastri was praised by the public for his audacious around-the-outside move on Norris for the lead. After the race, however, the team decided that he’d been too aggressive despite not making contact.
The Singapore situation is similar enough to ask why that precedent wasn’t enforced — which might have seen the team tell Norris to hand the place back — but different enough to justify a different outcome.
The application of these myriad rules have also created what, for lack of a more precise term, could be called the vibe.
Several times this year Piastri has played the team game, either by not attempting to pass Norris or by handing a place back or sticking with a slower strategy.
It is purely circumstantial that Piastri has been in a position to have these calls requested of him.
Norris, on the other hand, has rarely been in a position to receive a team order. But for the purposes of an example, he took several laps and much pleading to let Piastri by at last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
One wonders whether the unfortunately lopsided count weighs on Piastri each time he abides by the team game.
‘THIS IS HARD’
It’s a situation not lost on Stella.
The Italian boss recognises that the rules of engagement — conspicuously rarely referred to as papaya rules these days — can be uncomfortable, but his position is that allowing his drivers to race totally unfettered would be worse.
“Every time we start our conversations with the drivers, we always remind ourselves, as a premise, that this is hard,” he said. “Because this is the only matter in which, when you race together as a team, actually you can’t have exactly the same interest for the two drivers, because they want to pursue their aspiration.
“This is a foundational principle of the way we are racing at McLaren. We want to protect this ‘let them race’ concept. We know that as soon as you adopt this concept, you face difficulties, and we remind ourselves.
“But it’s within this awareness — self-consciousness, in a way — that then we develop our conversation.”
He praised the attitude of his drivers — who undoubtedly have made McLaren’s life easier this season when it so easily could have been nightmarish — for buying into the team’s principles.
“You need to be thorough and you need to have integrity in approaching that, and I’m very proud of the way Lando and Oscar have been part of the process so far, because if we have been able to navigate through this difficult fact of going racing, it’s because we have Lando and Oscar involved.
“They’ve been just great individuals, great contributors, and that’s why it’s been successful so far, and definitely we will work hard to make sure this is true for the remainder of the season and the years ahead in which we will keep on racing with Lando and Oscar.”