In Singapore the other week, the real story wasn’t George Russell’s win or McLaren’s successful defense of its Constructors’ championship. It was the first-lap contact between teammates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, light in touch but heavy in implication. What began as a brief brush of orange and anthracite became a reminder of how precarious the balance has grown within the second-oldest active Formula One team. Two drivers, evenly matched and differently wired, are now separated by fine margins that no management manual can quite smooth over.
McLaren insists on a “let them race” philosophy, bound by guidelines to prevent its charges from literal and figurative destruction while keeping the contest pure. To argue that the Singapore clash tested that creed would be to understate the obvious. Norris, squeezed while fending off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, clipped Piastri’s front wing. Even as the stewards naturally deemed it a racing incident, team principal Andrea Stella chose not to intervene; from his vantage point, it stemmed more from the competition’s aggression than friendly fire. Inside the garage, however, interpretations varied. What one saw as a racing risk, the other took as disregard. And in a title fight this close, every gesture, every silence, begins to weigh differently.
Zak Brown, as much marketer as manager, insists McLaren will not change course. The rules, he said, will hold even with Verstappen surging back into contention for the Driver’s title. To be sure, the stance is both bold and purposive. To retreat now — favoring one over the other and thus meddling mid-season — would betray the very culture Macca has been rebuilding: confident, unflappable, self-policing. Yet the closer its stalwarts get to the prize, the more dangerous the self-restraint becomes. What passes for even-handedness in March comes off as paralysis in October.
Piastri leads Norris by 22 points and Verstappen by 63, but these are numbers that give off the illusion of control. Stella concedes that balance between drivers with “different aspirations” is always delicate. The papaya rules are meant to keep order, but emotion bleeds through regulation. Each driver believes his claim is just and the risks he takes are justified. In this regard, the team radio transforms in equal parts to courtroom and confession booth, amplifying grievances long before the checkered flag is waved. Managing the frequency — how much heat to allow before it burns through trust — may yet prove to be McLaren’s most daunting task.
Six races remain, and conventional wisdom is not wrong to assume the inevitability of a flashpoint. Should Norris and Piastri butt heads anew, McLaren will face a harder choice: hold the line on principle or intervene for pragmatism. Either path carries with it no small measure of cost. What Brown considers consistency, critics adjudge to be hesitation. That said, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, bringing with it a concession that leadership, in sport as in business, is manifested less by the rules than by the acknowledgment of their consequences. Which is why the Singapore scrape cannot but be seen as a warning, not of failure, but of proximity: to victory, to pressure, and to the limits of authority.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
