Time for a ‘gloves-off’ Piastri v Norris title fight? F1 Q&A

McLaren secured back-to-back constructors’ championships at the Singapore Grand Prix but an opening-lap battle for third place between team-mates Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris was the main talking point.

Briton Norris finished on the podium and has cut title leader Piastri’s advantage to 22 points in the standings with six races and three sprint events remaining.

McLaren have won the constructors’ championship but Oscar Piastri has sounded fed up since qualifying at Monza, and with the ‘papaya rules’. Is it time the drivers’ title actually becomes a more gloves-off, not-so-friendly fight? – Nick

The conversations at McLaren following the Singapore Grand Prix are certainly going to be long and involved, and may well be tense.

Oscar Piastri made it clear during the race that he was not happy with the fact Lando Norris had collided with him in his overtaking move at Turn Three, and clearly questioned whether it complied with the team’s internal code of conduct governing on-track battles.

As Piastri put it: “That wasn’t very team-like, but sure. Are we cool with Lando just barging me out of the way?”

When he was told the team would take no action in the race, but would review it afterwards, Piastri said that was “not fair”.

This follows the Italian Grand Prix, when Piastri was ordered to give second place back to Norris, after the Briton lost it because of a slow pit stop.

And Hungary, where Norris was allowed to switch to a one-stop strategy and ended up beating his team-mate despite being three places behind him after a difficult first lap.

And Canada, where Norris drove into the back of Piastri but immediately accepted blame.

In this situation, it’s easy to see why Piastri could feel hard done by, although he insisted after the race he was not concerned Norris was getting preferential treatment.

It remains to be seen, of course, what Piastri says about Singapore when he gets to the next race in Austin, Texas.

So far, both McLaren drivers have bought into the team’s philosophy.

Fundamentally, that is that the team should be fair and equitable and the drivers are allowed to race, on the proviso they don’t compromise the team’s interests. Essentially, that means don’t crash into each other.

After Singapore, both Norris and team principal Andrea Stella said nothing would change on that front now the constructors’ championship is sewn up.

The team still want to win the drivers’ championship, and Max Verstappen is still a threat, albeit a distant one, so Piastri and Norris can’t throw caution to the wind.

They also want to beat each other, and the outcome of any contact is always uncertain in F1.

So, while it seems likely that the tension will increase between Piastri and Norris as the championship fight comes to a head, any decision to start throwing punches on track, so to speak, would come with risk.

I was recently at a talk event with David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen in London. They were asked about their view of perceptions of favouritism towards Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri at McLaren. David responded by saying that Zak Brown was Lando’s personal manager, so people could read into that how they liked. Do such business relationships at least not present a conflict of interest to people like Zak? – Steve

McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown is not Lando Norris’ personal manager. That is Mark Berryman, who has mentored Norris for many years.

Brown played a management role with Norris through his junior career, but no longer has that. Brown is now Norris’ boss.

What do you make of Oliver Bearman’s first season in F1? Do you think any top teams would be interested in giving him a seat in the future? – Peter

Bearman is having a very good rookie season.

He’s had a few incidents, and is at risk of a race ban if he is found to be at fault for another one in the next couple of races – unfairly in some eyes.

But his speed and performance have been strong.

He has shown he fully deserves a seat in F1, and many teams will be monitoring his progress over the remaining races of his Haas deal, which lasts at least until the end of next year.

He’s also a member of the Ferrari driver academy.

To make a convincing case to be considered for a top drive in the future, Bearman has to, at the very least, beat team-mate Esteban Ocon.

So far, Bearman is edging their head-to-head in qualifying 11-9, and has an average advantage of 0.084secs. He is also on a run of out-qualifying Ocon three times in a row and four times in the past five races.

Bearman is 10 points behind in the championship but his ninth-place finish in Singapore was a strong drive and the sort of high point you look for to judge a rookie’s potential.

With an extra team next year giving us 22 cars on the grid, what does that mean for points and qualifying sessions? Will points still be for the top 10, and how many cars will get knocked out in each qualifying session? – Alice

Why do teams (and commentators) consider tyre offset as an advantage, when it never seems to be the case? Especially as most circuits are so difficult to overtake at and track position is surely the better strategy as shown at Singapore. – Chris

A ‘tyre offset’ is when there is a disparity in tyre life – how many laps a set of tyres has done – between two cars.

To have fresher tyres is generally always an advantage, unless degradation is extremely low, because tyres lose a small amount of performance each lap – this can be anything from a few hundredths of a second to more than 0.1secs.

So a tyre offset in terms of having fresher tyres is always an advantage, and that’s why teams sometimes use it strategically in races to try to gain position.

But of course it is not always a definitive advantage in terms of guaranteeing a place gain.

A driver benefiting from a tyre offset will nearly always gain time on a car ahead of them with older tyres.

But overtaking would first depend on catching – which will dependent on the size of the gap, how much the performance advantage is and how long it lasts. Generally, the benefit of an offset diminishes the older the chasing car’s tyres become.

If the driver does catch the car in front, then passing remains as difficult as ever.

Tyres get affected by sliding around in dirty air behind another car and lose their performance. And the driver may have lost too much performance in chasing the car down and not have enough tyre energy left to pull off a pass by the time he reaches them.

The reason teams sometimes go for a tyre offset is that if a driver is chasing another car, can’t pass, and then stops at the same time as their rival, the same stalemate is likely to prevail after the stop.

So going for a tyre offset – as McLaren did with Lando Norris against Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in Singapore – is a means of creating another possibility to pass.

The bigger question in that specific case is over McLaren’s strategy. Why did they allow Verstappen to pit first, when they could have tried to pass him by using the so-called ‘under-cut’? And why they did not try for a bigger tyre offset by leaving Norris out longer.