Piastri fumes at Norris’ ‘pretty **** job’ but Brundle defends actions

Oscar Piastri was left fuming as Lando Norris’ “pretty **** job at avoiding” contact saw the two collide at Turn 3 on the opening lap, the Aussie coming off second best.

Martin Brundle put it down to Norris making “contact with two cars”, as he bounced off of Max Verstappen, before tagging his McLaren teammate.

Oscar Piastri v Lando Norris kicked off in Singapore

Lining up third and fifth on the grid for the Singapore Grand Prix, with championship leader Piastri ahead of Norris, the two found themselves battling for position at Turn 3.

Piastri was not able to make gains off the line as Max Verstappen, P2 on the grid, blocked the Australian driver and opened the door for Norris to fly through.

But as Norris found himself bouncing off Verstappen’s rear wheel, he clattered into Piastri.

Piastri was not impressed, but in his usual cool calm manner said: “Yeah, I mean that wasn’t very team like.”

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

Told by his race engineer Tom Stallard that “we’re looking at it, let me get back to you.”

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

👉 The results of the F1 2025 championship

👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

Piastri: “That’s not fair, I’m sorry, that’s not fair.

He was told, “Oscar, we’ll have the opportunity to review together afterwards, focus on this race mate.”

McLaren’s decision not to do anything about it had Piastri responding with a lot more emotion, saying: “If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate, then that’s a pretty **** job of avoiding.”

But while the championship leader was clearly unhappy with his teammate’s antics, former F1 driver Martin Brundle defended the Briton.

“I thought it was punchy, opportunistic, aggressive, but this is a motor race,” he said in the race broadcast.

“The ground rules have just been reset there, because Oscar will… and I can’t see how McLaren can swap that around that particular one. Why they would, why they would justify that.

“But Oscar will be okay ‘so that’s it then isn’t it, that’s how we go racing.’. It’s just changed.

“But McLaren wants to get the Constructors’ done, then they can worry about squabbling drivers thereafter.”

McLaren, it could be said, had set a precedent for this at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix when Piastri got punchy with Norris and barged past his teammate on the opening lap.

But as Piastri’s frustration grew, the stewards ruled that there was nothing to investigate and McLaren didn’t intervene, Brundle went as far as to defend Norris.

After all, he’d “made contact” with Verstappen before he made contact with his teammate.

“I think they have to park all of you know what happened here, there and everywhere,” said Brundle. “It was great driving, hustling. And I would’ve thought that if it was Oscar or anybody else.

“The problem,” he continued, “is that Lando actually made contact with two cars doing it. But it’s pretty tight down there it is.”

It was potentially the start of what could from now be an intense title race between the McLaren teammates.

Read next: Max Verstappen ‘living in the heads of McLaren drivers’ as Brundle weighs in