Gloves off for Norris and Piastri as McLaren wins Constructors’ crown

As George Russell scored an emphatic win for Mercedes at the Singapore Grand Prix, McLaren celebrated its first back-to-back Constructors’ Championship since 1991, having wrapped up its tenth crown six races early thanks to a three-four finish for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. A monumental achievement.

Yet while the team game element was rightly savoured, chiefs Andrea Stella and Zak Brown simultaneously faced new tension within their ranks. Piastri was fuming at the perceived injustice of his team-mate clattering into him at Turn Three after the start, then beating him, as the title battle with Norris was cranked up a notch or four.

Racing drivers are powerless without the hard work and dedication of the team behind them. But when push comes to a robust shove, they are primarily selfish – because they have to be. Now the first part of McLaren’s job in 2025 is complete, both drivers will feel there should be nothing holding them back. The greatest prize in racing is there for the taking and team requirements become secondary. Expect fireworks.

How the McLaren clash played out

Russell made a clean getaway to keep Max Verstappen’s soft-tyred Red Bull at bay through the Turn One-Three sequence – and in those moments the Singapore GP was essentially won. At the same time, Norris turned his qualifying deficit to Piastri into a race-day surplus – but not without an unneighbourly whack to Piastri’s sister car.

Starting fifth, Norris picked off Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes from launch and eyed a move on his team-mate in third via the inside line into Turn One. Advantage Norris, but the pass was not yet done. Piastri was still hanging in there on the outside line as Norris checked up but couldn’t stop bending his left-front wing endplate against the rear of Verstappen’s Red Bull. That slight contact, on a still damp track after pre-race rain, sent the McLaren into the side of Piastri’s car. Intentional? No, and that’s how the stewards read it. But the upshot was the same: Norris was now third having nerfed his way into and past his unimpressed team-mate.

Piastri’s call for justice

“That wasn’t very team-like, but sure,” complained Piastri – and soon he appeared to be calling for the positions of the two McLarens to be reversed. “Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way?” he questioned on team radio. The answer, after a “we’ll get back to you” delay, appeared to be yes. “That’s not fair,” Piastri responded when the news was broken to him to just get his head down and race on.

Norris, naturally, defended his actions. "Anyone on the grid would have done exactly the same thing as I did,” he said. “So if you fault me for just putting my car on the inside of a big gap, then you shouldn’t be in F1. I don’t think I did anything wrong. Of course, I misjudged a little bit how close I was to Max, but that’s racing. 

“Nothing happened otherwise, and I’m sure I still would have 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.”

Piastri, who finished fourth after that Turn Three shuffle, was careful not to stoke the flames when his reaction was sought – despite his obvious annoyance. “I need to go and look at it,” he said before paying tribute to the team for its Constructors’ title achievement.

A growing sense of unease

However careful he is in public, for Piastri the Singapore contretemps keeps up a running theme in which he has felt aggrieved in the wake of McLaren’s supposedly fair ‘Papaya Rules’ racing philosophy in recent weeks. Back in August at the Hungaroring, McLaren allowed Norris to take what turned out to be the superior race strategy, which allowed him to jump the Australian and win. Then at Monza, Piastri was ordered to gift back second place after Norris had lost the place merely to a slow pitstop. Yes, he’d consented to Piastri taking the priority on stopping first despite running behind Lando on the road. But isn’t a slow stop just racing bad luck?

Now this, in the intense heat and under the lights of Singapore. It’s times like this that the old racing driver paranoia begins to set in, creating a sense within Piastri’s head that the team is against him – that Norris as World Champion is the preferrable outcome. Piastri has played down any suggestion of favouritism towards his team-mate, but the challenge now for Stella and Brown remains critical: to cool hot emotions, keep the drivers communicating without rancour and race over the final half-dozen races cleanly, fairly and without malice.

But perhaps it’s time to forget the ‘Papaya Rules’ and just leave them to it from here on in. The standings with six rounds to go leave Piastri with a reduced advantage of 22 points over Norris, with Verstappen now 63 points off the lead.

Russell’s perfect night

Two years ago, Russell was bruised – but not physically – when he nosed his Mercedes into the wall on the last lap of the Singapore GP, losing a nailed-on podium. He hadn’t forgotten that pain in the sweet post-chequered flag moments this time as he savoured a second victory of the season and the fifth of his career so far.

“It feels amazing, especially after what happened a couple of years ago,” Russell said. “That was a bit of a missed opportunity, but we more than made up for it today.

The pole position and victory were something of a surprise, after Russell crashed in Friday practice. “Friday was a really tough day for me for many different reasons, and I wasn’t feeling comfortable,” the 27-year-old said. “But by the time we got to Q3 I felt great in the car, and that’s when it matters.”

Having fended off Verstappen at the start, a strong first stint in which he opened a gap was crucial to the final result. “Obviously I was a bit nervous at the beginning when I saw Max on the soft [tyre],” he said, “but that first stint was great from us and we extended the gap.”

It looked easy, but it never is in Singapore – a race that was the first to be officially proclaimed as a ‘heat hazard’ round under a new regulation that allows drivers to use cooling vests without a weight impediment. All the drivers looked spent after the flag, as they chugged water to rehydrate as quickly as possible.

Late penalty for Hamilton

Behind Piastri, Antonelli got the better of both Ferraris to claim fifth for Mercedes. On lap 54 of 62, he passed Charles Leclerc, who had been enough of a threat to the McLarens earlier on to influence the timing of their pitstops.

Lewis Hamilton outqualified Leclerc this time but dropped behind him at the start and spent most of the race racing in his wake. But having moved well clear of the rest, Ferrari pitted him a second time for soft tyres, ordered a fading Leclerc to let him past and had a crack at Antonelli. But a couple of off-track excursions were evidence to back up Hamilton’s complaint that he’d “lost his brakes.”

Now under pressure from Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin, Hamilton struggled to keep it within the white lines in the final laps, much to the annoyance of his old nemesis. As it turned out, there were just too many track limits violations to be ignored in those final miles and post-race Hamilton was pinged with a five-second penalty, dropping him behind Alonso to eighth in the final classification.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.