That is one way to finish an afternoon. As Speedcafe reports, Oscar Piastri dragged his machine into the top five at Marina Bay by lunging past Lewis Hamilton on the very final lap. It was a proper racing move that salvaged something from a bruising weekend, leaving the Australian just one position behind teammate Lando Norris.
Here is the thing, though: Piastri was entirely unimpressed by the hype. When asked about his last-lap heroics, the Melburnian kept his feet planted firmly on the ground. "I mean it’s for fifth place. So there’s a cap on the excitement. But certainly made it more exciting at the end. Which was good fun," he remarked.
It had been a genuinely messy afternoon before that grandstand finish. Piastri was running smoothly with the lead group until a slow pit stop on Lap 34 dropped him behind his teammate. Things went from bad to worse when McLaren spotted a slow puncture on his front-right tyre, forcing an unscheduled second stop on Lap 42. He fell back, clawed his way through, and finally pounced on Hamilton as the Mercedes driver's tyres cried enough.
Yet the brutal reality remains that the team simply lacked the speed to fight for the win. Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc took first and second respectively, while Kimi Antonelli steered his Mercedes to complete the podium. Piastri admitted they were simply a step behind, stretching his frustrating podium drought to 13 races—his longest run without a top-three finish since the opening phase of his F1 career. The 25-year-old remains seventh in the drivers’ championship with 138 points.
Down in the other garage, Norris had his own headaches to wrestle with. After finishing fourth following a brief late fight for a podium spot, the reigning world champion owned up to a costly error while battling Hamilton. An overly optimistic lunge allowed Antonelli to slip past both of them.
Norris was blunt about the team's current ceiling, noting that without upcoming developments, fourth-fastest is simply where they sit. The weekend's damage was extensive, compounded by a disastrous Saturday sprint where Norris and Piastri collided on the final lap while fighting for fourth. McLaren's grip on the constructors' standings is suddenly looking perilously thin, with their advantage over Red Bull slashed down to a mere seven points, while Ferrari sits more than 100 points clear in second.
