Despite a number of flashpoints in races this year, Oscar Piastri has never let his emotions get the better of him and thrown McLaren under the bus when it comes to his post-race interviews.
So, despite the clear annoyance in his Singapore GP radio messages about it being “not fair” that Norris kept position after they made contact on the opening lap in Singapore, he was always going to behave a bit calmer when the microphones appeared in front of him.
But as he gathered his thoughts in the media pen afterwards, there was no hiding from Piastri's stance that he wants answers from the team about why it made the call it did after the McLaren cars made contact between them which is so frowned upon.
And this ultimately revolves around a desire for a better understanding of whether the ground rules of fairness that have governed his battles with Norris are being adhered to in an even fashion.
As Piastri spoke to the media, he repeatedly said that the first thing he wanted to do was to review the incident itself - as he was not fully aware of all the circumstances that led up to the clash.
“Once I have the full picture of things, then yes, undoubtedly we will speak about it,” he said.
“I want to see exactly what happened before I make any conclusions.”
The issue of fairness across both McLaren cars has been a recurring theme all season, and has been thrust more into the spotlight in the wake of moments when team intervention could have been interpreted as not being totally balanced across both drivers.
And these moments have become increasingly in the spotlight as the championship intensity increases.
It could be argued that Piastri lost out to the fairness of Norris’s strategy freedom at the Hungarian Grand Prix, and the fairness of McLaren switching positions at the Italian GP because of Norris’s slow stop.
Now he will want to know if the fairness of McLaren not intervening in Singapore, as a consequence of what McLaren boss Andrea Stella said was “another racing situation", was the right call or not.
While Piastri gave an emphatic “no” in response to a question about whether or not he was worried Norris was getting preferential treatment, he did suggest that there have been some less satisfactory moments this year.
Asked by The Race if he felt things had been totally fair across both sides of the garage this year, he paused before offering his answer.
“Um…I think ultimately yes,” he said. “There's obviously been some difficult situations for the whole team, and I think we've obviously spoken about a number of things.
“Things have been better at certain points, yes. But ultimately it's a learning process with the whole team. And I'm very, very happy that the intentions are very well-meaning, if that makes sense.
“So I have absolutely no concerns about that. Yeah, just obviously there's been some tough situations this year and this is another one.”
Piastri’s team radio chatter
Looking at Piastri’s mid-race comments gives us both a more raw and authentic view, albeit one that’s obviously heightened by the intensity of the cockpit and the limitation of not having a wider perspective of events.
Here’s how it unfolded in the early laps between Piastri and race engineer Tom Stallard:
Piastri (lap one): That wasn’t very team-like, but sure.
Piastri (lap two): So are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way?
Stallard: We’re looking at it, let me get back to you. At the moment, settle in.
Stallard (lap three): We’re still looking at that incident. We will look at it. But I need you to just focus on what we can do here. Control the controllables mate.”
Stallard: Turn 3 incident, no further action from the stewards. As a team we can see Lando has to avoid Verstappen so we won’t take any action during the race we can review further afterwards.
Piastri: Mate that’s not fair. I’m sorry, that’s not fair.
Stallard: Oscar, we’ll have the opportunity to review together afterwards. Focus on this race mate. We can still have a good result here.
Piastri: Yeah but if he has to avoid another car by crashing into his team-mate that’s a pretty s**t job of avoiding.
Norris: I wasn’t aggressive to Piastri
Norris cited the slippery track at the start as part of the reason why he ended up clipping Verstappen.
“The start was good, just the right side of the grid was good. I think it was a good launch as well,” Norris recalled.
“So [I] got across and put myself in a good position to not get checked up out of Turn 1 and into 2.
“And just, yeah, had a big gap on the inside of Oscar, and it was just very close, also slippery because it was still damp in places and drying out.
“And I think I just clipped the back of Max's car. And that's just give me a little correction. But then that was it.
“So, yeah, good in terms of I got two positions, and if I didn't get them there, I probably would never have got them because we saw it was too difficult to overtake.
“So the aggression there and the forward thinking paid off.”
Asked to clarify if he meant aggression towards Piastri, Norris said: “Well, I hit Max, so it wasn't aggressive on my team-mate”.
Stella appeared to support this view after the race.
“Obviously Oscar made some statements while he was in the car, but that's the kind of character that we want to have from our drivers,” he said.
“They have to make their position very clear. That's what we ask them.
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“At the same time we have to put things in perspective. The perspective of a driver that is in a Formula 1 car with the intensity of it being the first lap.
“The perspective that obviously just saw Lando moving on to him, we know that Lando in reality, had a contact with Verstappen and oversteered onto Oscar.
“We will have good reviews, good conversations and like after Canada [where Norris hit the back of Piastri and crashed out of the race], we will come back stronger and even more united.”
