Headline: Norris says McLaren handed him “consequences” for Piastri clash after Singapore start
In the glow of a Constructors’ title double, McLaren still had a hard conversation to get through. Lando Norris has confirmed the team “held [him] accountable” for the lap-one brush with Oscar Piastri in Singapore — and that it came with “consequences.”
The flashpoint arrived meters after lights-out. Norris darted for a sliver of track alongside his teammate after a small tap on Max Verstappen’s Red Bull pitched his McLaren wide, and the two papaya cars touched. It was light contact, but enough to scuff Norris’ MCL39. There was no order to swap, no immediate censure over the airwaves. Piastri calmly asked the pit wall if it was “cool with Lando barging me out of the way,” calling the call “unfair” on the radio, while Norris pressed on and ultimately finished third to Piastri’s fourth — a result that sealed McLaren’s second straight Constructors’ Championship.
The real work happened later. “We had a lot of discussions, as you would expect, and very productive,” Piastri said ahead of Austin. “We’re very clear on how we want to go racing as a team… Lando has taken responsibility for that and so have the team.”
Norris didn’t duck it. “The team held me accountable for what happened, which I think is fair,” he said. “We made progress from there on understanding what the repercussions were for me and on avoiding… anything worse happening than what did.” Asked to spell out those repercussions, he declined. “That’s got nothing to do with you guys,” he told reporters, adding simply: “There are consequences.”
None of this came with steward intervention; the incident wasn’t even investigated. But McLaren’s internal code — the “papaya rules,” as the drivers have half-jokingly called them — is simple: don’t hit each other. “Let’s say the rule is not to crash with each other,” Norris explained. “This wasn’t a crash; it was much smaller. But we still don’t even want to get it to that point… There was a gap, and I went for it, and what happened happened, but nothing changes from how we go racing. Zak [Brown] and Andrea [Stella] didn’t want that to happen. As teammates, we don’t want that to happen.”
The backdrop to all this is a title fight that’s edged from respectful to razor-thin. With the season in its final quarter, Oscar Piastri leads the Drivers’ standings by 22 points over Norris, with Max Verstappen a distant but present threat 63 points back. Both McLaren drivers are hunting their first crown, and McLaren has spent the year trying to keep the floorboards steady under an intra-team duel that can swing by a single decision at Turn 1.
Canada was a reminder of how quickly it can tilt. Norris misjudged a late move on Piastri there and eliminated himself on the spot; contrition came quickly and the situation cooled just as fast. The same approach applied post-Singapore. “Sometimes, repercussions are not positive,” Norris said of Stella’s debrief, “but it’s clear that the interest for Andrea is in preserving the positive teamwork that we have… the teamwork that’s allowed us to go from being last on the grid a few years ago to being the best performing team.”
He paused, almost as if to underline the stakes. “When you’re fighting for wins between those two drivers, then, of course, you’re going to have trickier moments. But the reason we’ve been able to deal with things well is because of Andrea’s and Zak’s leadership.”
If there’s an edge to Norris’ stance, it’s this: he’s not about to stop racing. “I put just as much risk on me putting myself out of the race as I do whoever I’m racing against, whether it’s Oscar or anyone else,” he said. “I didn’t want what happened to happen, but I’m never gonna let go of an opportunity like there was.”
That’s the balance McLaren is trying to hold — a title fight without civil war. The no-contact mantra stays, the elbows stay sharp, and the points table will do the talking. Singapore might be filed under “lessons learned,” but it was also a reminder: this is a championship decided at the margins, and McLaren intends to keep both cars — and both drivers — in that conversation to the last lap.
