McLaren let the dogs off the leash in Singapore — even when those orange cars smacked wheels on lap one.
Turn 3, first lap, and it got tight. Lando Norris jinked after clipping the back of Max Verstappen, the MCL39 squirmed, and he thumped into Oscar Piastri. Norris emerged ahead with a nicked front wing; Piastri’s radio lit up. “Is the team cool with Lando barging past me? That’s not very team-like,” came the aggrieved message from car 81. The pit wall, notably, didn’t bite.
Andrea Stella’s explanation afterward was measured and very McLaren: context matters. In his view, this wasn’t a straight intra-team lunge that needed to be undone. Norris’s contact with Piastri, he argued, was “a consequence” of the earlier tap with Verstappen — a chain reaction on lap one rather than a clean-cut case for intervention.
“We assessed it on the pit wall and didn’t see the need to swap,” the team principal said, promising the inevitable debrief. “We want our drivers to be clear about their positions — and they were — but given how it started, we let it run and we’ll review it properly.”
That decision will grate with some, not least Piastri, who did his bit at Monza a few weeks ago when McLaren called for a swap to redress Norris’s slow pit stop. Italy felt like team-first pragmatism. Singapore? To Piastri, “not fair.” He later cooled off in TV pen mode, noting he hadn’t reviewed the footage and didn’t believe there was intent. Still, he left a couple of points on the table after his own slow stop cost several seconds, trailing Norris home by about two seconds.
Even so, McLaren walked out of Marina Bay with the big trophy already effectively theirs. Third and fourth sealed back-to-back Constructors’ Championships for Woking — a marker of how ruthlessly consistent this outfit has become in 2025. Per the championship standings, Piastri’s lead in the Drivers’ race is trimmed to 22 points with six weekends left, the title fight still simmering, the dynamics inside the garage increasingly relevant.
This is where Stella’s tone matters. He’s not policing them into submission; he’s trying to keep both drivers sharp, aligned, and trusted. Singapore’s pinch point isn’t the kind of flashpoint that fractures a team, but it is the kind that leaves a bruise if not addressed. McLaren knows the drill. They’ve handled awkward Sundays this year with open debriefs — Canada was name-checked as a moment that actually pulled them tighter. Expect another round of “good conversations” before freight leaves for the next one.
Purely on merit, letting them race made sense. Lap one is chaos; the last thing a team chasing both titles wants is to be adjudicating intent at 280 km/h while everyone else barrels into Turn 5. The pit wall had a choice: tidy it up and set a precedent for lap-one swaps, or trust the bigger picture and move on. They chose the latter. If there’s a line, it’s probably drawn somewhere around — don’t be clumsy, don’t be cynical, and don’t cost the team points.
Piastri’s frustration is understandable. He’s been the one in control of the championship narrative, and he’s driven with a level of economy this year that doesn’t leave much on the table. Watching Norris — inadvertently, yes — get ahead via contact is a hard swallow. But he also knows how this game works. He’ll go to the room, watch the angles, and return to base. He’s got a title to close out.
Norris, for his part, kept his head down. The front wing scuff didn’t derail his pace, and once Verstappen fell back into the mix, the McLarens ran their own race. The margin between orange cars at the flag was slim; the championship margin is slimmer, and that’s what will frame the next conversations in Papaya HQ.
The takeaway? McLaren didn’t blink. Not on lap one, not on the pit wall. It’s a vote of confidence in two drivers who can manage the heat without cooking the kitchen. Internally, they’ll pick over the telemetry and pick their words carefully. Externally, they leave Singapore with a constructors’ crown confirmed and a drivers’ title that’s going down to the wire.
Some teams micromanage their way out of trouble. McLaren is trying to win its way through it. Sunday suggested they trust the people in the cars as much as the numbers on the screens. That’s a good place to be — as long as those orange wheels don’t touch again.
