Button’s advice for Piastri after Norris championship fight flashpoint

Coming up short in his lap 1 battle against Lando Norris in Singapore, Jenson Button says Oscar Piastri should just accept that his teammate got the better of him and “that’s it”.

Although Piastri left the Marina Bay circuit a week ago singing from the team hymn sheet as he declared “the intentions are very well-meaning”, that wasn’t how he felt in the moment as Norris “barged” into him at Turn 3 on the opening lap.

Oscar Piastri v Lando Norris: Who will come out on top?

Fighting for track position on the opening lap, Piastri was blocked by Max Verstappen, which opened the door for Norris to make an epic start from fifth place on the grid.

Challenging for third place, if not even second, Norris had to avoid Verstappen and instead clattered into Piastri with the Briton coming out ahead in the battle.

The usually calm-headed Aussie was clearly irate as he spoke with his race engineer Tom Stallard.

“Yeah, I mean that wasn’t very team-like,” he said.

He then added: “So, are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way? What’s the go there?”

But as McLaren’s decision not to intervene became evident, he complained: “That’s not fair, I’m sorry, that’s not fair.

“If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate, then that’s a pretty **** job of avoiding.”

The teammates finished the 62-lap race at the Marina Bay circuit third and fourth with Norris on the podium, taking three points out of Piastri’s lead in the Drivers’ Championship to reduce it to 22 points.

But if you ask 2009 F1 World Champion Button, it was nothing but a racing incident and one that worked out in Norris’ favour.

Oscar Piastri v Lando Norris : F1 2025 stats

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

“It’s racing,” Button told Sky F1.

“He’s side-by-side. He had the little tap into the back of the Red Bull of Max. And he’s got a bit of oversteer, which is quite unusual. I think it just shows how low the grip was. He didn’t purposefully try to push him in the wall.

“It’s not like he drove him into the wall. It’s not like he drove all the way to the wall hoping that Oscar would hit the wall or disappear. It was halfway through the corner, he had a snap of oversteer.

“If I was Oscar, I would be like, ‘ah, my teammate got the better of me there!’

“And that’s it.”

But with pundits declaring the papaya rules that McLaren adheres to have been reset, the big question is will Piastri respond.

Former F1 driver Martin Brundle believes the gloves are off.

“It would have been a feisty post-race team debrief, and I have no doubt whatsoever that the dynamics between the two McLaren drivers will irrevocably change going forward,” Brundle wrote in his Sky column. “It was just a matter of time.”

Guenther Steiner gave it gas, not brakes, on the Red Flags podcast.

“I would say it’s gas, and then they will take the decision to put team rules in,” he said. “Gas.”

But he stopped short of calling it a certainty, “It’s not a certain if they put rules in that one has to win. That’s why I’m not so convinced.”

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