Lando Norris has taken full responsibility for the last-lap collision with McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri that wiped out nine points at the Singapore Grand Prix sprint race, admitting after Sunday’s main race: “It was a mistake on my part and I let down the team.”
The two McLaren cars made contact on the final lap of Saturday’s sprint at Marina Bay, with Norris trying to pass Piastri for fourth place on the inside of Turn 5. Piastri spun into the barriers and retired. Norris carried on and finished eighth, scoring a single point for a team that had been on course for nine.
What followed was a weekend-long arc of defiance, team meetings and, eventually, a very public apology.
What happened at Turn 5
Norris went for a gap that, on paper, existed. According to BBC Sport’s F1 correspondent Andrew Benson, the move was legitimate under the driving-standards guidelines — Norris was far enough alongside to have a right to the space — but he began to back out when he realised he was not being left enough room, and the two cars collided anyway.
Both spun. Piastri’s race was over. Norris dropped from fifth to eighth.
The arithmetic is what stings for McLaren. Had the move come off, Norris would have gained one point and Piastri would have lost one; the team’s total would not have changed. Instead, a potential nine-point sprint haul became one.
As Benson put it, from a team perspective it was all risk and no reward.
The defiant first reaction
Norris was not punished after a stewards’ investigation, and his immediate response raised eyebrows. Speaking to Viaplay, he pushed back when asked whether the collision was unnecessary given the two were teammates fighting over fourth and fifth.
“What, to go for a big gap? Or overtake?” he replied, before asking the reporter: “What’s the title of the race? Sprint … What’s after sprint?” When the reporter answered “race”, Norris said: “Wow, good job. Yeah, it’s race!”
Even after initial talks with the team, he was still defending the move after qualifying. “Really, it’s still my fault,” he said, “but I deserved to go for the space and I still believe I had the right for it.”
Benson noted that both drivers could have handled themselves better. There is an argument Norris should not have tried the move at all; there is an equally strong one that, once he had, Piastri should have left more space and carried the fight down the following straight.
Stella’s verdict: ‘simply not acceptable’
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella did not hide his feelings. Speaking to Sky Sports, he called the collision “simply not acceptable”. When asked later that evening whether he was worried the message about team play was not getting through, he answered with his usual calm — but words like “unacceptable”, “disappointed” and “serious” made his anger clear.
Further meetings between the drivers and senior management followed before Sunday’s race.
Stella also made it clear that McLaren will not abandon its policy of fairness and equal status between its drivers, even though he knows that policy will keep producing moments like this one.
“I classified it as unacceptable,” Stella said, “which is a statement that comes from the team principal, but I was very encouraged by the fact that it’s a statement that very rapidly came from our drivers as well.”
He added that the conversations were not finished, but that the interesting part was not whether Norris was alongside Piastri. It was about all stakeholders — team and drivers — embracing “the interest of the team as something that is superior to any particular, singular, individual interest”.
“This is what I expect as a team principal,” he said, “this is what the 1,000 people that work at McLaren expect from our drivers.”
The U-turn: ‘I let down the team’
By Sunday, Norris had changed his tune — in more ways than one. During the Grand Prix he offered to help Piastri late on as the Australian tried to pass Lewis Hamilton’s fading Ferrari. And after finishing fourth in the race, with Piastri fifth, he finally took full responsibility.
“It’s pretty straightforward. I can’t attempt what I did,” Norris said. “I should never have attempted it in the first place, even if the move was on.
“I simply have to think more of the team that I represent than myself. It was a mistake on my part and I let down the team.
“I’ve also apologised to all of them and I owe them all an apology. We’ll do better next time.”
The pair combined for 22 points in the Grand Prix, a measure of recovery after the sprint disaster.
Steiner: ‘This was not a world champion move’
Not everyone was moved by the apology. Guenther Steiner, the former Haas team principal, delivered a blunt verdict on The Red Flags Podcast.
“You really shouldn’t be doing this. This was not a world champion move,” said Steiner, referring to Norris’s status as the 2025 champion.
He was kinder about Stella’s handling of the affair. “Andrea in these situations is very good,” Steiner said. “I think he made him feel a w***er. He explained to him that this is not happening.”
And Steiner did not believe the apology was for show. “I don’t think Norris [apologised] for a political reason,” he said. “[Norris] came to the conclusion that [it] was actually pretty stupid what he did… There was no need for it, especially the reaction afterwards.
“Because when you crash into your team-mate… it can happen. But the reaction from him, because that is not Lando. He realised he was a little bit too cocky.”
Are ‘papaya rules’ failing?
The crash has reignited the debate over McLaren’s approach to running two drivers of equal status — the so-called papaya rules — and whether the premise is sustainable.
Stella’s answer was firm: McLaren will not deviate from fairness and equal treatment, even though he accepts it will lead to incidents that test the policy’s limits from time to time. The team’s position, in his telling, is that the answer is not less freedom for the drivers but more internal alignment — drivers putting the team’s interest above their own without being told to.
Whether Norris’s Sunday apology satisfies that standard is the question the paddock will keep asking. Steiner’s read was that the Briton genuinely realised the error; the initial Viaplay interview, though, is the clip that will follow him around.
The bigger picture from a wild Singapore weekend
The collision was not even the biggest story of the weekend. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen dominated at Marina Bay, winning both the sprint and the main race, and his maximum 33-point haul lifted him to fourth in the drivers’ standings.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished the Grand Prix second, with championship leader Kimi Antonelli completing the podium. Hamilton’s race unravelled on a tyre strategy that went wrong after he ignored a call to pit during a virtual safety car — a decision he later apologised for, calling it “my call” over team radio — and he ultimately lost out to Norris, Antonelli and Piastri.
For McLaren, the damage was contained by Sunday’s strong result. But the sprint crash cost the team eight points it will not get back, and it cost Norris something harder to quantify: the benefit of the doubt.
Frequently asked questions
Who was at fault for the Norris-Piastri collision?
Norris himself took full responsibility, saying he should never have attempted the move even though it was on. He was not penalised after a stewards’ investigation, and BBC Sport noted that Piastri could also have left more space once the move was underway.
How many points did McLaren lose in the Singapore sprint?
Nine points became one. Piastri retired after the contact and Norris fell from fifth to eighth, so a potential fourth-and-fifth finish worth nine points returned just a single point for Norris’s eighth place.
What did Andrea Stella say about the crash?
The McLaren team principal called the collision “simply not acceptable” and used words like “unacceptable”, “disappointed” and “serious” when discussing it, while also saying he was encouraged that the drivers quickly adopted the same view. He confirmed McLaren will keep its policy of equal treatment between the drivers.