Piastri’s inner circle met McLaren to clear the air. It didn’t work

In the past three Formula 1 races, Oscar Piastri has learnt that what constitutes bad luck will be defined by his team, and that contact with McLaren teammate Lando Norris isn’t encouraged, but is permitted.

Combined with McLaren sealing the Constructors’ Championship at last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, that clarity might just give the 24-year-old Melburnian a chance to reset after a three-race run where his grip on becoming Australia’s first F1 champion in 45 years loosened.

In Singapore, Piastri finished an aggrieved fourth after Norris, who started two places behind him, made a robust pass of his teammate on the first lap, nudging Piastri towards the trackside wall after hitting the back of Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen.

Given Piastri had been instructed to tone down his aggression in a similarly heated head-to-head fight with Norris in Italy last season, the shove and loss of position was too much.

“That wasn’t very team-like, but … sure,” Piastri griped to race engineer Tom Stallard over the team radio.

“Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way? What’s the go there? I’m sorry, that’s not fair. If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate, that’s a pretty shit job of avoiding.”

For Piastri, usually so cool and measured in the cockpit, Singapore was quite the blow-up.

But it was justified.

In isolation, Norris’ move on the first lap was acceptably aggressive.

But more broadly, Piastri felt for the third time in a five-race span that McLaren’s philosophy to pursue fairness between its two drivers had adverse consequences for only one of them.

In Hungary in August, Norris beat Piastri after being permitted to switch from a planned two-stop pit strategy to pit just once, repelling a late Piastri assault to win by 0.6 seconds as the Australian was warned by Stallard to “remember how we go racing”.

Two rounds later at Monza, Piastri – who had inherited second place from Norris when Norris lost time in a shoddy pit stop – reluctantly swapped positions with his teammate after being asked by McLaren, team principal Andrea Stella calling the demand “a matter of fairness”.

That context explains why Piastri was so irritated in Singapore, particularly as his inner circle – including former F1 racer and manager Mark Webber – had met with McLaren to debate what had happened at Monza. Piastri’s initial feelings when asked to swap places – “is a slow pit stop part of racing?” – had necessitated the clear-the-air talks.

Singapore should have been a night of celebration for McLaren despite not adding to its 12 wins this season, the team securing the F1 constructors’ championship with six rounds to spare.

Piastri’s anger, Norris’ response – “I hit Max, it wasn’t aggressive on my teammate” – and Stella’s response that the incident “would lead to some good conversations”, let some of the air out of the celebratory balloon, particularly when it emerged that Piastri unplugged his team radio while being congratulated for his race by McLaren CEO Zak Brown, and that he’d not been part of a visit to the podium for a team photo to celebrate the constructors’ title.

McLaren later tried to put the radio disconnect and podium pic stories to bed by citing operational requirements and a communication mix-up, but it only added to the optics.

Confirmation of the teams’ title may actually encourage McLaren to loosen the idealistic yet impossibly tight hold it has tried to have on a 2025 title fight.

With six rounds to go and a total of 174 points remaining, Piastri leads Norris by 22. Reigning world champion Verstappen sits 63 points adrift of Piastri even after winning two of the past three races. Were that margin the gap between the leader and any other driver with a quarter of the season left, you wouldn’t consider Verstappen’s title chances as anything more than mathematically possible.

For Piastri, Verstappen narrowing that gap to something more threatening may actually be a benefit.

Whichever McLaren driver has the ascendancy if Verstappen’s championship bid became more than a longshot should – should – prompt the British team to focus its attentions on its leading driver, something it has eschewed while fighting the perception among some sections of the fan base that Englishman Norris, by dint of his passport, is favoured over Australian Piastri.

“Perhaps McLaren should now just let their two drivers duke it out, gloves off, between themselves with zero interference.”

Martin Brundle

It’s a narrative that has only gained traction after the three incidents in the past five races where Norris could be seen to have gained a helping hand by the team. More accurately, though, the narrative is fed by McLaren’s continual over-engineering of a title fight it is desperately trying to control. Even more pertinently, it is fuelled by the TV coverage fans receive in Australia from a British broadcaster that routinely tiptoes to the precipice of cheerleading for all four British drivers, not just Norris.

McLaren – a company founded by a New Zealander with a Bahraini majority owner and run by an American CEO with an Italian team principal – is as international as any other F1 team.

That McLaren has invested in Norris through its junior programs from as far back as 2017 and only inherited Piastri after a 2022 contract dispute with Alpine, logically suggests that a Norris world title would be the ultimate reward for that commitment of time and money, but not a factor in overtly prioritising one driver over another for a team that hasn’t won F1’s biggest prize in 17 long years.

A Piastri v Norris championship battle was always on the cards in 2025 after McLaren snapped a 26-year drought between constructors’ titles in 2024. With the sport’s rule book largely staying untouched, the form guide from the end of one season spilled into the next.

Next year, however – with F1’s regulations set for their biggest shake-up in more than a decade in what effectively acts as a hard reset for the series – adds extra tension to this year’s title fight.

The last time F1 changed tack so significantly – the introduction of V6 turbo hybrid engines in 2014 – the pecking order was upended so seismically that Red Bull, winners of the final nine races of 2013, were also-rans the next year as Mercedes won 16 races between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg to kick-start a run of seven consecutive driver/constructor championship doubles.

Continuity between regulation changes isn’t a given, and with Norris contracted to McLaren for the next two seasons and Piastri until 2028, there’s the possibility that this season might be each driver’s best chance to win the championship in the immediate future.

With the constructors’ title secure and what constitutes acceptable conduct in the “Papaya Rules” manifesto revealing itself race by race, it’s a chance Piastri is still best placed to capitalise on, once his exasperation over Singapore evaporates.

Knowing where he stands and how he can race is arguably worth much more than the three championship points he lost to Norris, as British former racer turned pundit Martin Brundle suggested in his post-Singapore column for Sky Sports.

“The dynamics between the two McLaren drivers will irrevocably change going forward,” Brundle wrote.

“Perhaps McLaren should now just let their two drivers duke it out, gloves off, between themselves with zero interference.”

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