‘That is not fair,’ says Piastri

The delicate equilibrium at McLaren as the team endeavours to give Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris fair shots at the world title is coming under increasing tension from Max Verstappen’s rampaging run of form in the updated Red Bull. The situation became only more pressured in the opening seconds of the Singapore race when Norris bounced off the back of Verstappen’s car and made contact with Piastri into Turn 3. Both McLarens continued but Piastri was deeply unimpressed and, having pulled aside for Norris under team instruction at Monza after the latter’s pitstop went wrong, clearly felt the team should intervene in a similar manner here. “Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way? What’s the go-to there?”

The McLaren pitwall declined to change the order and Piastri responded with: “That is not fair. I am sorry. That’s not fair. If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his team-mate than that is a pretty s**t job of avoiding it.”

Norris and Piastri went on to finish third and fourth respectively and the team etiquette of giving the lead car first call on the pitstop timing arguably cost them the chance of being able to overtake Verstappen. Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, on new tyres, was lapping initially faster than the yet-to-stop McLarens and while it wasn’t putting Piastri’s position under immediate threat, the McLaren pitwall was aware that the co-ordination of both cars needed to be considered when bringing Piastri in to ensure he got out still ahead of the Ferrari.

As the lead team car, Norris was asked if he would object to Piastri being called in first so as to keep him safe from Leclerc. Norris did object and requested that he be pitted before Piastri, so as to keep the other McLaren from making up ground on him. Pitting Piastri early now meant pitting Norris even earlier. They were brought in on consecutive laps shortly after Verstappen (who’d had to stop as his soft tyres were finished). This in turn meant that the McLarens didn’t have as big a tyre age offset over Verstappen in the second stint as they could have done. The calculated lap time advantage needed for an on-track overtake around this street track is 1.5sec. Without the complication of Piastri’s pitstop timing, inset, the McLaren could have used its superior tyre deg (and the fact that they had started on the tougher mediums) to run long enough to have that advantage on new tyres over Verstappen.

In gatekeeping the internal battle between its drivers, McLaren had possibly lost the opportunity to out-score its main championship rival.