After faint sparkles in the past 17 races, the dense humidity of the Singapore night sky was where this season’s touchpaper was finally lit. Posing with the hundred or so team members in front of the McLaren garage, celebrating their inevitable constructors’ triumph, you wonder what emotions were running through the head of Oscar Piastri.
For a man whose best quality is his serenity in the heat of battle, Piastri boiled over underneath his visor at Marina Bay. Prodded off-line at turn three by teammate and title rival Lando Norris on lap one, the Australian vented his feelings over team radio to race engineer and former Olympic rower Tom Stallard.
“So are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way? What’s the go-to there?” Piastri queried. Cue panic on the faces of team principal Andrea Stella and CEO Zak Brown on the pit wall. When informed that no intervention would occur, he was apoplectic: “That is not fair. I’m sorry, that is not fair.”
Stallard replied: “Oscar, we will have the opportunity to review together afterwards – focus on this race, mate. We can still get a good result here.” But Piastri was having none of it: “But if he [Norris] has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate, then that is a pretty s*** job of avoiding.”
Papaya rules? Out of the window. Clean racing with no contact? Not anymore. For what was proving to be the nicest F1 title race in the sport’s history, it was a much-needed grenade with six rounds remaining.
Having cooled off, both Norris and Piastri played down the incident afterwards. The added context of Norris’s slight touch with Max Verstappen, causing his McLaren to deviate into the second papaya car, meant no investigation was necessary in the eyes of the stewards, nor the McLaren executives.
It was an audacious overtake from Norris. Now trailing by 22 points, it was the sort of do-or-die manoeuvre that can trigger a points swing. The Bristolian has been criticised all too often for his reluctance to take risks on track, but here, he threw down the gauntlet to his teammate.
“Anyone on the grid would have done exactly the same thing as I did, so if you fault me for just going on the inside of a big gap, then you should not be in Formula 1,” Norris said. “There was nothing wrong with what I did.”
There you go then. Statement made. The ramifications are now fascinating.
It’d have been some watch to be a fly on the wall for the McLaren team briefing last night, after the popping of champagne in celebration of their constructors’ triumph. Piastri, managed by ex-Australian F1 driver Mark Webber, who wore his heart on his sleeve on many an occasion, will want an explanation of where this leaves the two drivers in wheel-to-wheel combat heading into the next race in Austin.
Stella and Brown do deserve credit for not labelling either McLaren driver their undisputed No 1 this season. They’ve allowed jousting on track, within the ambiguous “papaya rules” tagline, which reminds the duo they can race each other without any risk of contact, but Norris has just fallen foul of this.
What’s to stop Piastri – who we shouldn’t forget ceded second place in Monza a month ago after a team request late in the day – from now making decisions in his own self-interest? The answer, of course, is nothing. The answer, with the constructors’ title wrapped up, should be nothing.
Brown, incidentally, labelled the incident “hard racing.” He added: “First corner, looks like Max and Lando either touched or had to check up and so it was clearly an exciting turn three incident.
“Racing, tough racing and you’ve got three, four cars all stacked up, that’s going to happen every once in a while.”
Both Piastri and Norris are clearly feeling the heat of the battle, not least with the leaps in performance Red Bull and Mercedes have found in recent weeks. Max Verstappen, 63 points adrift of Piastri, is not completely out of site either; the Dutchman did well to take second place behind George Russell in Singapore.
But if Norris needed to ruffle his teammate’s feathers, then, at Marina Bay, he did just that. The Brit gambled and it paid off, chipping another three points away from Piastri’s lead. The impact it has on harmony within the McLaren garage remains to be seen. But now, from here on in, the gloves are most certainly off.
