Precedent set in how McLaren drivers race? Oscar Piastri evasive

Oscar Piastri gave little away as he faced a grilling about his clash with Lando Norris at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Norris slid into the side of title rival and McLaren teammate Piastri's car at the start of the race as the Briton edged ahead to move into third place.

Piastri was left frustrated by the incident and claimed over team radio that it was “not fair” that McLaren did not reverse the positions.

The Australian immediately came on the radio to complain: “Yeah I mean that wasn’t very team like, but sure.”

Piastri later questioned: “So are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way or? What’s the go to there?”

When informed that McLaren would not be swapping the place back, Piastri added: “That is not fair. I am sorry. That’s not fair. If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his teammate than that is a pretty **** job of avoiding it.”

Piastri appeared to have cooled down after the race but was tight-lipped in the TV pen when he faced questions from the world’s media.

“Obviously a difficult race, a difficult first lap. I’ve not seen the replay. I just know from in car, so I’ll go and have a look,” Piastri said.

“It’s obviously a great night for the whole team. Obviously not the race I was looking for, but for the whole team, tonight is the culmination of a lot of hard work from not just this year, but lots of years.

“It’s a really proud moment for me to be a part of that and a proud moment for the whole team.”

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown claimed his drivers race hard but fair.

"They have driven brilliantly all season. You can't win the constructors' without two awesome racing drivers,” he told Sky Sports F1.

"As you can see, we are letting them race. That was a bit more of a nail-biter there, but they race hard, they race clean, they race to win.

"A lot of racing to go and hopefully a lot more victories for both of them."

Asked if he agrees with Brown’s comments, Piastri replied: “Yes, I think we do. I don’t think there was any intention of contact. But there was, and I need to look at the replay and see what exactly happened.”

Piastri was then asked if he feels the incident has set a precedent about how the McLaren drivers go racing.

“I don’t know. I’ve not seen the incident from the tv camera. I need to look at that first before I say anything,” he responded.

"I think just take the learnings from this weekend and see what can be improved. I think the weekend as a whole was generally very good.

“Practice went well, qualifying went well, the race I was maybe a little bit slow to get going, but I feel like the pace was pretty good.”

'Oscar Piastri can have no complaints'

Jenson Button believes the clash was fair as it was not intentional from Norris.

“It’s racing,” the 2009 world champion said. “They are 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.

“That just shows how low the grip was. He didn’t purposely try and push him in the wall.

“It’s not like he drove him into the wall. It’s not like he drove all the way into the wall hoping that Oscar would hit the wall, or disappear. Part-way 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.”