Austin, Oct 17: McLaren’s scrap in Singapore has been settled. It’s time to get the drivers back to chasing a Formula 1 championship.
Lando Norris said Thursday that the team determined he bore responsibility and the consequences for bumping into teammate Oscar Piastri at the start of the last race in Singapore two weeks ago.
The aggressive incident allowed Norris to snatch the early position and finish ahead of his teammate. And that shrunk Piastri’s championship lead to just 22 points over Norris with six grand prix and three sprint races left in the season.
While no details were given on what “responsibility” and “consequences” mean for Norris going forward, both drivers said there would be no change to the team’s “papaya rules” of racing heading into the United States Grand Prix this weekend.
“We’re very clear on how we want to go racing as a team,” Piastri said at the Circuit of the Americas. “And the incident we had in Singapore isn’t how we want to go racing.”
Piastri complained over the team radio during the Singapore race that by not ordering Norris to swap positions, the team wasn’t being “fair” to him after previous incidents when he was ordered to let Norris pass him.
The episodes have raised questions whether the pressure and tensions of a title fight between teammates, and racing decisions, are starting to tear apart a tight-knit team that already clinched the constructor’s championship. Piastri and Norris are both chasing their first F1 driver’s championship.
Norris said it was fair to be held accountable for a racing incident that favoured him at the finish line, even though the team did nothing to correct it during the race and he wasn’t penalised by race stewards.
Norris downplayed any suggestion of team fractures similar to when Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were fighting for the championship in 2015 and 2016.
He praised McLaren team principal Andrea Stella’s leadership in tamping down internal tension.
“I don’t know what’s happened to other teams in the past and what Lewis and Rosberg had, but Andrea’s No. 1 priority is preserving the morale, and the framework that we set out,” Norris said.
Piastri’s seven wins this season are two more than Norris, but neither driver has stood atop the podium in the last three races.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is on a late-season charge with two victories and a second place in the last three races to revive his title hopes.
With Verstappen in hot pursuit, Piastri was asked if he thinks the team should favour him as the leader to try to close out the championship. (AP)
