There’s no small amount of irony in the idea that McLaren has probably spent more time in the last two weeks talking about driver behaviour and team orders than it did during all of its title-contending 2025 season.
But the fact that the events of the Singapore Grand Prix put internal harmony at the top of McLaren’s agenda is indicative of the place the team finds itself as it faces final championship defeat in the coming rounds — and prepares for what it hopes will be a more competitive 2027.
Lando Norris’s last-lap lunge on teammate Oscar Piastri for fourth place in the sprint revealed that principal Andrea Stella’s team-first mantra has slipped after having just about made it through last year intact.
The questionable move would have been worth one point to Norris and none to the team. The result of his misjudgment was that McLaren lost eight points when Piastri crashed out and Norris limped home in eighth.
Though Norris is still alive in the championship, his hopes were and are purely mathematical, rendering the high-stakes, low-return move nonsensical.
Of course we want to see drivers racing — it’s what we’re all here for, and Norris made that his defence — but McLaren is engaged in a real big-money fight to finish second in the championship.
It’s no different to a driver at the pointy end of a title campaign picking their battles based on the points available — balancing the risks with the rewards.
The team is now only seven points ahead of Red Bull Racing in the battle for third in the constructors championship and is an improbable 105 points down on Ferrari in second.
It all adds up to this being a fascinating moment for either driver to have put themselves ahead of the team — and it’s why McLaren is taking it so seriously.
Oscar Piastri’s rivalry with Lando Norris has been back in the spotlight.Source: Getty Images
“What was had [in the sprint] I classified as unacceptable,” Stella said afterwards, emphasising his authority as team principal.
“The conversations that we are having are not finished, but it’s not because we need to go back discussing if Lando was alongside Oscar — that’s not the interesting bit.
“For me the interesting bit is a reflection that all the stakeholders — the team, the drivers — will have to make around leading together the team, embracing constantly from inside the cockpit the interests of the team as something that is superior to any particular, singular, individual interest.
“The conversations from this point of view are not concluded, and there’s more we can do to become a more united and even stronger team.”
“That was not smart Lando!” | 00:29
WHY NOW?
Norris’s decision to go for the move and his subsequent 24 hours of strident defence come in the context of the reigning champion having enjoyed a comfortable upper hand in the internal McLaren battle this season.
On average the margins have been small, and Piastri’s defeat has not been total, but the picture is decisive.
Oscar Piastri vs. Lando Norris, 2026
Qualifying head to head: Norris leads 11-6
Qualifying differential: Norris ahead by 1.0 places
Time differential: Norris faster by 0.055s
Race head to head: Norris leads 7-4
Race differential: Norris ahead by 1.0 places
Points: Norris leads 201-138 (60-40 per cent)
Norris leads on every key metric to undoubtedly establish himself as the team leader this season.
He knows it, too.
With justification, Norris has regularly praised his performance this year as making the difference. He’s been operating on a high level, but with few results to show for it, he’s wanted to ensure we all know where he’s at.
To be fair, Piastri hasn’t disagreed.
“Putting it bluntly, I think some of the laps that Lando’s done in qualifying, to put the car on pole, have been better than what the car deserves,” he said in Singapore before the crash.
Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that Norris thought he could pull off the move he attempted in the wet sprint, when there was only a narrow dry line that offered no room for error.
Nor is it surprising the way he argued that it was his right to make the move.
Perhaps, further, his eventual profuse apologies — following behind-the-scenes talks with the infuriated Stella and McLaren CEO Zak Brown — amount to the gradual escape of some of the excess air from his not unreasonably inflated self-confidence.
Supercars return to Phillip Island in 27 | 00:40
“I take responsibility for my mistakes, and I learn from them,“ Norris said in the team’s pre-Austin press release, the only quote included from either driver.
“This team is my motivation every weekend, and my aim is to repay the hard work everyone puts in by improving, making better decisions, and representing the team in the best possible way.”
But so long as he outperforms Piastri — particularly while enjoying championship status — a clip around the ears is largely academic.
It’s up to Piastri to make his point on track.
‘I’M LIKING EVERYTHING I SEE OUT OF OSCAR’
The good news for the Australian and his fans is that progress is evident, even if gradual.
His one-lap deficit is down in the last five races, when he’s outpaced Norris twice. At two of the previous three grands prix he’s been the better performer.
The challenge of matching his driving style to the demands of the 2026 regulations and the McLaren in particular is slowly being met.
“I think he is [back],” Brown said in Singapore. “I think we’ve seen with these cars, it’s mixed up the field a little bit. Lewis is getting the better out of the Ferrari right now. George got more out of the car last year than Kimi. That’s moved around.
“I think these cars are so complex. I think some have adapted a little bit quicker than others, but I’m liking everything I see out of Oscar.
“I think he’s feeling much more confident, on top of things. I like where both our drivers are now.”
Stella said he’s always been of the opinion that it was only a matter of time, with Piastri’s problem external rather than something intrinsic to him.
“The car needs quite a lot of effort to deliver a lap time, and it requires a level of intensity in the driving input which is much superior to last year,” he explained. “This is something that took some time for the drivers to understand.
Andrea Stella was filthy over the incident between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in Singapore.Source: FOX SPORTS
“It’s also one of the reasons why Oscar at some stage almost lost some of the competitiveness compared to Lando, and we were here discussing, ‘What is happening with Oscar?’.
“I’ve always said that that was a technical matter. Oscar just needed to understand how to force the car to do some things and [to] sort of abandon the fact that driving fast will not necessarily mean driving clean, if that makes sense.
“The signature of Oscar when we have seen him fast in the past was clean, it was really good data to see, it was very repeatable and it was fast.
“With this car, all these things together, they don’t seem to happen very often, so it’s a lot of work for the drivers.”
But there is a psychological element to it.
Some drivers are bigger confidence players than others, but all of them need to believe that they have the tools to drive quickly.
In the middle part of the season — the European phase of the campaign, when Piastri has typically excelled — he looked lost as he scrambled to match Norris.
The more positive recent signs are as much about him understanding his difficulties as they are about him knowing that he can solve them.
“Naturally, when you start giving yourself evidence of being able to drive a bit differently and in ways that aren’t that natural, they slowly become more natural,” he said.
“I think Malaysia [before Singapore] was another good step forward in terms of understanding what I need to do and not having to work quite so hard to get there and getting there a little bit more intuitively and without as much effort, which is ultimately the place I want to get to in this part of the year.”
Norris slummed for smug response | 01:40
IT’S STILL ALL ON THE LINE IN 2027
In a way, Piastri is fortunate there’s been little on the line for McLaren this season. His slow adaptation to 2026 would have looked far harsher had Norris been in title contention or had McLaren been in the mix for the constructors championship.
The reverse side of this coin is that Norris’s good season — and it has been very good — has counted for less than it could have in the shaping of the frontrunning pack. His estimation relative to Piastri has gone up only a little, much less than it could have.
It means power is still up for grabs next season if McLaren can return to the front.
If it does so, it will likely have a car that’s better suited to Piastri’s preferences — though that means the car he’ll have for the rest of the year won’t be dramatically different to the one he’s grappled with all season.
“It’s probably as good as it’s going to get [in the short term],” he said of his current form.
“To fundamentally bring the car a bit closer to where I would like it to be, I don’t think we’re going to have any magic answers this year.”
Stella pushed out these crucial handling upgrades until sometime next season.
“I don’t expect that what’s coming to the car [this year] will improve this characteristic,” he said.
“I think we need something more fundamental than simply adding some downforce to the car like is happening in the coming races without fundamentally changing some further aspect, which we are addressing longer term — at the earliest, I would say, with the MCL41 for 2027.”
‘What’s the title of the race?’ | 00:23
But he added that some of the updates coming to the car later this year were effectively trial parts that would feed into the 2027 program.
“It’s important for us that we deliver upgrades [this year] because we are in a close fight for championship position, but we also want to prove some of the fundamental concepts that will carry into the next year’s car, because at this level of maturity of the cars, you are starting to push the aerodynamic development, and you may start to see that things work, but some things may not work because aerodynamics is starting to get complicated.
“It may go right, it may go wrong, so we wanted to track test some of the fundamentals we will carry into next year, and I think this is quite convenient, because Red Bull pretty much are on par with us in terms of points and are ahead in terms of competitiveness, and we wanted to set a quest to Ferrari in the championship.”
Reaching Ferrari would be a considerable stretch. Even keeping Red Bull Racing at bay suddenly looks ambitious given recent form.
But McLaren’s line-up is formidable, and if upgrades can begin to shift the car’s handling characteristics by the end of the year, a late surge could get it over the line.
And unlike most of this season, it could be Piastri who hauls the team forwards.