Norris defends first lap move on Piastri: ‘If you fault me, you shouldn’t be in F1’

Lando Norris firmly rejected any suggestion he dealt unfairly with his team mate Oscar Piastri on the first lap of the Singapore Grand Prix.

The two McLaren drivers made contact as Norris dived down the inside of his team mate at turn three. Norris clipped the Red Bull of Max Verstappen ahead of them, then skidded wide into his team mate, but both continued.

Norris said he ran wide in turn three because the track was damp. “The start was good,” he said after the race. “The right-hand side of the grid was good, I think it was a good launch as well, so I got across and put myself in a good position to not get checked up out of turn one and into turn two.

“I just had a big [move] up on the inside of Oscar. It was very close [and] so slippery because it was still damp in places and drying out. I think I just clipped the back of Max’s car, and that just gave me a little correction, but then that was it.”

When Piastri objected to Norris’s move on his radio during the race, his race engineer Tom Stallard said the team would not intervene as a result of it because “Lando had to avoid Verstappen.”

Piastri was unimpressed. “If he has to avoid another car by crashing into his team mate, then that’s a pretty shit job of avoiding,” he replied.

However Norris defended his move after the race. “I still need to go in and see it, I might look at it and think there’s something else I could have done better,” he said in the press conference after the race.

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“But anyone on the grid would have done exactly the same thing as I did. So I think if you fault me for just going on the inside and putting my car on the inside of a big gap then I think you shouldn’t be in Formula 1.

“I don’t think there was anything wrong that I did. Of course, I misjudged a little bit how close I was to Max, but that’s racing. Nothing happened otherwise, and I’m sure I still would have ended up ahead of Oscar anyway because I was on the inside and he would have had the dirty side of the track on the outside.

“So I need to go and review it, of course. I need to look at things and see if there was something I could have done better. The last thing I want is to make contact with my team mate, especially because all I get is questions from you guys.”

Norris pointed out he is at a disadvantage compared to his team mate in the championship, as he remains 22 points behind after this weekend’s race.

“I’m the one that can’t afford anything compared to him,” he said. “I would [have] put myself at risk just as much if that kind of thing happens.

“So I’ll see what I can do with it next time. But the FIA obviously thought it was fine, and the team did too, so that’s it.”

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2025 Singapore Grand Prix

• McLaren’s pit problems strike again – three of their last four stops were slow
• Track surface changes key to surprise Singapore GP win – Russell
• Norris defends first lap move on Piastri: ‘If you fault me, you shouldn’t be in F1’
• Ferrari warned Hamilton not to cut corners. He claimed it was “force majeure”
• McLaren satisfied first-lap incident between Norris and Piastri was “just hard racing”

Browse all 2025 Singapore Grand Prix articles