2 hours ago
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Lando Norris stood by his controversial collision with Oscar Piastri that lit up the world championship fight in Singapore on Sunday, insisting that if anyone disagrees with him they should not be in Formula One.
The British driver banged wheels with his McLaren team-mate on the opening lap of the race, an incident Piastri called a ‘s*** job.’
Piastri, who leads Norris by 22 points with six races remaining, demanded to be handed the place back, but team principal Andrea Stella rejected the request.
Norris finished third and Piastri fourth as George Russell won with Max Verstappen runner-up.
Norris was unrepentant afterwards, saying: ‘It was slippery. I put it on the inside, but nothing more than that.
‘I clipped the back of Max’s car. That gave me a correction. I hit Max – so I wasn’t aggressive towards my team-mate.
Lando Norris (left) defended himself after bumping into team-mate Oscar Piastri (right)
Norris bumped into Piastri on the opening lap of the Singapore Grand Prix
‘Anyone on the grid would have done that. If you fault me, you should not be in Formula One. I misjudged how close I was to Max, but I would have ended up ahead of Oscar anyway.
'The last thing I want is to make contact with my team-mate.’
The officials deliberately and expressly show more leniency on the opening lap than on any other. They want to encourage competition, and this was a ‘racing incident’ by any rational appreciation.
The lid came off the kettle in Piastri’s cockpit. ‘So are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way? What’s going on there?’
The response came from his race engineer Tom Stallard: ‘We’re looking at it. Let me get back to you.’
The stewards then investigated the incident.
Stallard came on with their verdict: ‘No further action from the stewards. As a team we can see that Lando has to avoid Verstappen so we won’t take any action during the race. We can review further afterwards.’
Piastri countered: ‘Mate, that is not fair. I’m sorry, that is not fair.’
Stallard, again: ‘Oscar we will have the opportunity to review together afterwards. Focus on this race, mate. We can still get a good result here.’
Piastri: ‘Yeah, but if he has to avoid another car by crashing into his team-mate then that is a pretty **** job of avoiding.’
Further misery for Piastri struck after 26 laps when his rear left was slow going on in his only stop. He was stuck there for 5.2sec. He fell further behind Norris, marooned in fourth place.
