George Russell wins F1 Singapore GP as Norris nibbles at angry Piastri’s lead

The champagne was popping in abundance for McLaren as the team secured their 10th Formula One constructors’ championship at the Singapore Grand Prix, but there is a hangover to come that may yet be the cause of a lasting headache. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, fighting for the drivers’ title, reached an angry flashpoint that might overshadow the moment long after the fizz has gone flat.

Beneath the floodlights of the Marina Bay circuit George Russell won the race with a dominant drive from pole to flag for Mercedes, a deserved first win for the British driver in Singapore but one eclipsed by the continuing soap opera at McLaren. Their efforts to maintain an almost impossible level of equality between their title protagonists took another torturous, and many might consider inevitable, turn, since the team set the precedent of potentially intervening each time one driver believed the other had been given a slightly larger slice of cake.

Related: Norris rejects Piastri’s complaints after McLaren duo clash in Singapore

Piastri, the calm, assured Australian who has barely shown even perturbed pique this season, was, as they say in Melbourne, mad as a frog in a sock with his teammate and team after Norris barged past him at the start. The pair finished in the same order, third and fourth behind the Red Bull of Max Verstappen, ensuring Norris took three points off his rival, who leads by 22 with six meetings remaining. There may yet be a reset back at base but at the time Piastri’s feelings were clear.

Norris knew beforehand that he must take every chance to put points on his rival and leapt at the first opportunity. He burst out of the blocks from fifth on the grid and made up two places past Kimi Antonelli and, crucially, Piastri to claim third, uncompromising in elbowing past his teammate up the inside through turn three. He had a snap of oversteer mid-corner and just clipped Verstappen in front of him, which banged him into the Australian, edging Piastri toward the wall. All three emerged but Norris had the place.

Piastri was aggrieved while McLaren were forced to consider how to manage the situation. “Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way?” Piastri said. “I mean that wasn’t very team-like, but sure …”

It was the opening salvo in what appeared to be a race-long cauldron of discontent in his cockpit. He was furious with the team’s response that they would review it afterwards because the contact had occurred as Norris tried to avoid Verstappen. “That is not fair, I am sorry, that’s not fair,” Piastri said. “If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate then that is a pretty shit job of avoiding it.”

Afterwards the team, still in the throes of celebrating the title, felt it had been a racing incident. “We’re letting them race, as you can see,” said the McLaren CEO, Zak Brown. “Tough racing, but when you’ve got three or four cars all stacked up, that’s going to happen every once in a while. We’ll look at it in more depth on Monday but clearly just hard racing.”

Norris concurred it had been just a spot of cut and thrust with no ill intent, and that his nudge on ­Piastri had been caused by his light biff with Verstappen. It would likely be viewed as nothing more were it not for McLaren’s previous intercessions creating such a grey area. It is a problem of their own making, so scrupulously have they attempted to manage their drivers with a commitment to giving both an equal shot. They are free to race one another but the team have intervened for the purpose of “fairness” over the last two seasons.

Most notably at Monza this year, they had Piastri give Norris a place back after he had lost it to his teammate through a slow pit stop. Both drivers have appealed to the team at various points expecting them to intercede as part and parcel of the racing process, rather than as is more usually the case just letting them have at it and sorting out the ­argy-bargy afterwards.

On a later radio call with the team Piastri was still so deeply aggrieved he declined to engage in a potential strategy debate with his engineer. “You do whatever you think is best,” he said. It was a decidedly disenchanted response from a driver usually so calm and engaging and evidence this is a rankle that may last.

What followed on track in comparison was somewhat prosaic as Russell sprinted to the flag, the order unchanged as it had been at turn three behind him, and took the win by five seconds. It was redemption at last after he crashed out with a shot at victory in 2023.

Afterwards Piastri maintained he had full confidence in McLaren and how they were handling this two-horse title run-in and that he did not expect their approach to change; the stance was confirmed by the team principal, Andrea Stella. However, if nothing else Norris gave him notice he would be bold and unyielding in this title fight and that Piastri must match that on track, rather than with in-race horse-trading. There is likely, then, some steel on steel to come in this contest.

Antonelli was fifth for Mercedes, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finished in sixth and seventh for Ferrari, Fernando Alonso eighth for Aston Martin, Oliver Bearman ninth for Haas and Carlos Sainz 10th for Williams. But Hamilton was investigated after the race for repeatedly exceeding track limits when he was struggling with his brakes in the latter stages and received a five-second penalty, dropping him to eighth behind Alonso.