Original Summary

Getty Images / McLaren's Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri collided on the last lap of the Singapore sprint race Red Bull's Max Verstappen dominated the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, winning the main race and the sprint. His maximum total of 33 points from the event moved him up to fourth in the drivers' standings. Ferrari's Charles Leclerc finished the race in second and championship leader Kimi Antonelli completed the podium. BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions after the race at Marina Bay. After the last-lap incident in the sprint race in Singapore, are 'papaya rules' finally failing at McLaren, and with them the premise of running two number one drivers? - Alexandros The crash between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the sprint race in Singapore left, in Norris' words, "no-one very happy" at McLaren. Norris went for a gap at Turn Five on the final lap. It was a legitimate move, in terms of the racing guidelines, but he tried to back out of it as he saw he was not being left sufficient space, and the two cars collided. Both spun, Piastri into the barriers and retirement and Norris down from fifth place to eighth. What would have been nine points for the team from the sprint therefore became one. There are two ways of looking at the move. On a pure competitive level, between two rivals, Norris had the right to go for the move, and he complied with the driving-standards guidelines as to how far alongside he needed to be up to the point he started to back out. But from a team perspective, it was all risk and no reward. If Norris had pulled off the move, it would have meant one more point for him and one fewer for Piastri, but for the team collectively it would have made no difference. What was interesting was that, despite having had initial talks with the team about it after the sprint, Norris was still pushing his point of view after qualifying. "Really, it's still my fault," he said, "but I deserved to go for the space and I still believe I had the right for it." That raised a few eyebrows, but the truth is both drivers could have handled themselves better. While there is an argument Norris should not have tried the move, there is an equally powerful one that, once he had, Piastri should have given him more space, and carried the fight down the following straight. Team boss Andrea Stella was asked later that evening whether he was concerned about the message about team play not getting through to his drivers, and he dealt with it with his usual diplomacy. Stella maintained his usual calm, even demeanour, but words like "unacceptable", "disappointed" and "serious" made it abundantly clear how angry he was. The following day, Norris had changed his tune. Not only did he offer to help out Piastri late in the race as the Australian was trying to pass Lewis Hamilton's fading Ferrari, but he also finally took full responsibility for the incident. "I can't attempt what I did," he said. "I should never have attempted it in the first place, even if the move was on. I've simply got to think more of the team that I represent rather than myself. It was a mistake on my part and I let down the team." Stella made it clear McLaren would not deviate from their policy of fairness and equal status between the drivers, even though he is well aware it will lead to issues such as this that test its limits from time to time. "I classified it as unacceptable," he said, "which is a statement that comes from the team principal, but I was very encouraged by the fact that it's a statement that very rapidly came from our drivers as well. "So we are aligned as to how we want to lead this team forward in a joint effort between the team and the drivers. The conversations that we are having, they are not finished, but it's not because we need to go back discussing if Lando was alongside Oscar. That's not the interesting bit. "For me, the interesting bit is a reflection that all the stakeholders - the team, the drivers - will have to make around leading together the team, embracing constantly from inside the cockpit the interest of the team as something that is superior to any particular, singular, individual interest. "And while the conversations from this point of view are not concluded, and there's more we can do to become a more united and even stronger team, I'm pleased that Lando at some stage in the race adopted this way of thinking. "This is what I expect as a team principal, this is what the 1,000 people that work at McLaren expect from our drivers." I am regularly baffled by teams' tyre strategies, but Ferrari's in Singapore was the worst in recent years. We know Lewis Hamilton is taking responsibility, fair enough, but it wasn't his decision to stay behind Charles Leclerc. Where does this sort of thinking come from? - Julie Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur was especially sensitive about this topic after the race in Singapore, and it led to a particularly awkward news conference as reporters tried to get to the bottom of what had happened, and Vasseur kept cutting them off before they could finish questions. You could see how hard Vasseur was trying to keep himself calm, and it's easy to understand his feelings. The past few weeks, after all, have been a trying period for the team with lots of speculation about the future, which led to an unusual intervention from Ferrari after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix to make it clear Vasseur had the full support of chairman John Elkann. In this case, though, while the strategy certainly looked bizarre from the outside during the race, the explanation was pretty straightforward. Hamilton was on the back foot from the moment it became clear the medium tyres he was on for the first stint were the wrong ones for this race. The softs were much better. The mediums did not last long on Hamilton's car, so he made an early pit stop for softs, and the timing of that meant it was always likely he would need an extra stop. A virtual safety car shortl

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  • 发布时间：2026/10/13 14:54:13