McLaren is facing an awkward post-race debrief amid the championship celebrations at the Singapore Grand Prix as Lando Norris's forceful opening lap overtake left Oscar Piastri frustrated.
Piastri asked his team “so are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way?”.
Does Piastri have a point? Were the stewards right to rule that no further action was needed, and does McLaren need to take any action post-race?
Piastri doesn't need to play nice anymore
Scott-Mitchell-Malm
Piastri should, and just might, ignore any McLaren request in the name of 'fairness' over the final six races. The constructors' title is wrapped up and it is each man for himself in pursuit of the drivers' crown.
I'm not equating this with what happened at Monza in direct terms. Just because McLaren ordered Piastri to let Norris by there after a slow pitstop didn't mean it was obligated to intervene again here. They were different incidents and probably fall on different sides of whether 'that's racing'.
However...in Piastri's position, what obligation does he now have to play overly friendly? He could justifiably say ‘I moved aside because of your blunder with Lando at Monza - but you’ve not corrected his blunder here’.
And it was a blunder. Whether it was intentional or not, Norris was at fault, he took too much speed in and hit Piastri to complete his pass. "Lando had to avoid Verstappen" doesn't wash with me even on lap one.
This was always the problem with McLaren picking moments to intervene. The team may well say “that’s just racing” but if so, it just means Piastri is allowed to hit Norris out of the way next time.
A major stress test of McLaren's cardinal rule
Ben Anderson
It's the moment we've all been waiting for - a proper stress test of this apparent culture of faux harmony, 'the team always comes first', kumbaya stuff that McLaren and its drivers have been leaning on to justify whatever controversies they've invited upon themselves during this almost-exclusive title battle between Norris and Piastri.
Piastri's in-race anger was justified. From his point of view he's been bounced out of the way by his team-mate. McLaren team boss Andrea Stella is on record previously saying the McLaren drivers simply aren't allowed to make contact. Piastri will see contact being made, not through any fault of his own, and McLaren refusing to pull for him the levers of justice they so readily used to rectify a slow pitstop for Norris in Monza.
The complicating factor is that Norris only bounced into Piastri because Norris hit Verstappen first. It was clumsy, not deliberate, and that will no doubt be the 'out' McLaren can use to justify not getting involved - as well as the stewards implicitly ruling it a racing incident by not investigating either.
Trouble is, even that initial contact with Verstappen only happens because Norris is being super-aggressive in trying to overtake the other McLaren. We can't really begrudge him that approach - he needs all the points he can gain on Piastri to try to turn the tide in their championship battle.
But with that risk Norris is taking comes the responsibility not to break McLaren's cardinal rule: don't crash into your team-mate. Norris did, and now we wait to see what, if any, consequences are visited upon him by McLaren.
Team Piastri will no doubt be watching closely.
Uncomfortable questions for McLaren
Edd Straw
The wheelbanging between Norris and Piastri is a classic example of what can happen on the first lap. What made the circumstances around it more complicated is McLaren's laudable, but difficult-to-implement, guarantee of fairness between the pair.
Norris can point to nudging the back of Verstappen as leading to the contact with his team-mate, and it certainly wasn't anywhere near the threshold for stewards to intervene.
Equally, McLaren's desire to control the fairness equation understandably means Piastri took umbrage at what Norris called a "small correction".
The problem here is that you can talk about hypotheticals all you like, but there's so many scenarios that can arise that will be open to interpretation. Piastri saw this as a situation that demanded redress because it was not a fair pass, albeit based on his reaction in-race without the benefit of seeing it beyond what he experienced in the moment, whereas McLaren used the stewards taking no action and the confounding factor of the Verstappen collision to shrug it off.
The question here is how far are you required to go to avoid contact? And what happens when you have a driver, Piastri, who understandably feels he's been on a wrong side of the implementation of the agreed McLaren racing rules twice in the past three events?
Piastri was told to control the controllables by race engineer Tom Stallard when he was complaining. Perhaps McLaren, which has done a remarkable job in so many ways this year, is guilty of trying to control the uncontrollables with the extent of how it tries to manage fairness between the drivers and effectively over-promised on what it is possible to manage?
And if that's the case, that could create some major flashpoints in the races to come. Not to mention some tense conversations on what should be a day of celebration after winning the constructors' championship.
McLaren doesn't need to overrule the stewards
Josh Suttill
The stewards quickly (and rightly) ruled that the incident needed no further investigation and McLaren was right not to intervene mid-race.
McLaren isn't above the stewards, and I've never been a fan of any team swapping the positions of its cars purely to achieve ultimate sporting fairness (an impossible concept to achieve in reality), like McLaren did at Monza.
If a driver does something bad enough to their team-mate on track, you have to leave it to the stewards to judge and deliver the corrective justice.
Of course, McLaren has to investigate and work through the incident with both drivers after the race, but I hope the conclusion is 'this was fair racing', as was the verdict of the stewards.
This title fight will feature plenty more racing, and McLaren must allow that to continue to play out.
The stewards were wrong
Jack Benyon
The last thing F1 needs is more racecraft rules or guidelines because the ones in place don't really work already. But if you can crash into two cars in one corner and not get a penalty or have to give the position back, then why even have rules in the first place? Just let them smash each other about a bit?
Norris's contact with Verstappen and then Piastri was pretty light and I'd have hated Norris's race to be ruined by it. But he should have had to give the position back to Piastri.
McLaren has been made to look like the bad guy and its previous being deemed 'over-meddling' in its drivers' races and results means this is even more of a storyline for people like us to have to get into.
But ultimately, if the stewards felt it was OK, McLaren had no grounds to then overrule that!
'Within the rules and fine with the stewards, but not us, naughty Lando!'. Can you imagine the storm that would have caused?
Don't be surprised if there's more clashes
Gary Anderson
This Papaya rules situation is only going to get worse as the season runs down, with six races to go and Verstappen closing in (slowly) on both McLaren drivers, the last thing either McLaren driver needs is a DNF, either from a mechanical failure or over-opportunism.
The constructors' championship is sewn up, so as a team they can relax and take a deep breath. 'Papaya Rules' seems to mean 'race hard but don’t make contact', very easy to say but hard to do, especially on the first lap, and we've seen that today in Singapore.
Plus, with the competitiveness of the McLaren and the fact that they are both very capable and competitive drivers, we can only assume that both drivers will be more or less battling for the same piece of track and positions over the rest of the season, so I won’t be surprised to see more wheel-to-wheel contact.
From a team point of view, the intra-team battle will be even more difficult to manage, but now it is more down to the drivers to manage their own survival.
There are still 174 points up for grabs and Piastri is 22 ahead, so whoever does that the best at that will probably end up winning the championship, but they need to keep an eye on the rear view mirror for Verstappen.
These first lap, first corner skirmishes right through the field are part of racing and long may it continue; otherwise, we might as well hand out the points after qualifying.
Get rid of Papaya Nonsense
Glenn Freeman
This has to be the end of what I'm calling 'Papaya Nonsense'. McLaren has tried too hard to manage this drivers' championship battle between Norris and Piastri. Now the constructors' title is wrapped up and Piastri justifiably feels wronged; let the drivers get on with it.
Norris was properly alongside going into Turn 3, so was entitled to be there. But when he got out of shape and tagged the back of Verstappen, which pushed him into Piastri, you can see why Piastri felt so annoyed.
From the external cameras and even from Norris's onboard it didn't look too bad. But from Piastri's onboard it looked like Norris arrived at the apex out of control and just barged him out of the way.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, but that makes no difference to Piastri. He complied with a call most teams wouldn't make over Norris's slow stop at Monza, and he would have banked that one, assuming he'd get it back at some point. Clearly he feels this was the moment to get it back.
The stewards were right to leave the incident alone. But they didn't have to factor in the additional complexities of the team dynamic. The problem for McLaren is that its attempts to manage this title fight with Papaya Nonsense have created a level of expectation within the team that even minor moments like this are worthy of intervention.
It's time to throw those rules in the bin. Treat the drivers like grown-ups and let them fight each other like real racers.
