That wild collision between McLaren team-mates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri during the Singapore Grand Prix sprint race was, quite simply, not a world champion move. At least, that is the verdict of former Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner, as Motorsport.com reports.
Speaking on The Red Flags Podcast, Steiner did not mince words about the last-lap incident that saw the two papaya machines spin out while running in fourth and fifth place. Norris dove down the inside of his garage partner, clipped him, and completely ruined the sequence. Piastri was forced out of the race entirely, while Norris salvaged a single point by crawling home in eighth position.
Steiner laid it out plain and simple: drivers fighting at the top simply cannot afford that kind of recklessness. He also pointed out that Norris looked a little too cocky in his initial defense, where the Briton claimed he saw a big gap, went for it, and had every right to make the move. But Steiner reserved some praise for McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, noting that the boss handled the fallout brilliantly by making Norris realize how foolish the maneuver was without needing a heavy political apology.
To his credit, Norris eventually saw the light and sang a very different tune after the grand prix itself. Speaking to F1.com, he confessed that he should never have attempted the move regardless of whether a gap existed, admitting that he let the team down and owed everyone an apology for putting his own ambitions ahead of the collective.
Fortunately, the team bounced back when it actually counted on Sunday. Following the disaster of the sprint, Norris and Piastri put together a solid grand prix campaign, finishing fourth and fifth respectively to haul in a combined 22 points.
