Zak Brown described the Turn Three clash between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri at the Singapore Grand Prix as ‘just hard racing’. The Australian was furious with his team-mate after being bumped on the corner exit during an opening-lap tussle.
Piastri started from third on the grid but found himself running fourth, behind title rival Norris, as a result of the contact. The Brit was attempting to avoid significant contact with second-placed Max Verstappen, but nearly collected his team-mate in the process.
On the radio, Piastri demanded that McLaren tell Norris to hand the position back to him, but after an internal review, Andrea Stella’s squad agreed with the stewards and deemed no further action necessary. The 24-year-old was visibly frustrated after climbing out of the cockpit after watching more points slip away in his title bid.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 about the clash, McLaren Racing CEO Brown leaned towards the racing incident stance. “Like all race weekends, you review everything,” he explained.
“First corner, it looked like Max and Lando either touched or had to check up, and so it was clearly an exciting turn two incident. [It was] racing, tough racing, but when you’ve got three or four cars stacked up, that’s going to happen every once in a while. So we’ll look at it in more depth on Monday, but just hard racing.”
Team principal Stella downplayed speculation of a potential fracture in relations between the McLaren duo. “We have to put everything in perspective,” he said. “These are comments from a driver in a Formula One car, in the heat of the moment. The information that is available is just his point of view. As usual, we will have good conversations, build from there and come out stronger.”
Norris’ third-place finish means that, heading into the final six rounds of the campaign, the gap between the two World Championship protagonists has been trimmed to just 22 points. The Brit has momentum on his side, too, having finished ahead of Piastri in six of the last eight races.
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When probed over the contact, he staunchly defended his move. “I might look at it and think there’s something else I could have done or could have done better,” he said. “Anyone on the grid would have done exactly the same thing as I did.
“So I think if you fault me for just going up the inside and putting my car on the inside of a big gap, then you shouldn’t be in Formula One. I don’t think there was anything wrong that I did. Of course, I misjudged a little bit how close I am to Max, but that’s racing.
“Nothing happened otherwise. And I’m sure I still would have just 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.”