AUSTIN, Texas: 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 favored him at the finish line, even though the team did nothing to correct it during the race and he wasn’t penalized by race stewards.
“The simple answer is that there was contact between the two cars and that’s something which we always want to avoid,” Norris said. “I didn’t want what happened to happen. But I’m never going to let go of an opportunity. There was a gap and I went for it ... But nothing changes from how we go racing.”
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 favor him as the leader to try to close out the championship.
“No. I think every driver wants a fair chance to try and win a championship,” Piastri said. “For me, it’s more than fair to let us both keep fighting for that.”
Keeping it cool in the cockpit
Saturday’ sprint race and Sunday’s main event have been declared “heat hazard” events by governing body FIA because temperatures are forecasted to soar above 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius) on both days. That triggers a rule that gives drivers the option to wear specialized cooling vests during the race.
Texas will be the second consecutive race with the heat hazard designation. The cockpit of the car can be even hotter than the outside temperature.
The cooling vest pumps fluid around a network of tubes. Mercedes’ George Russell wore one in his dominant victory in the sweltering heat of Singapore. Verstappen didn’t wear his in finishing second.