Russell triumphs as soap opera overshadows McLaren title win

The champagne was popping in abundance for McLaren as the team secured their 10th Formula One constructors' championship, but there is a hangover to come that may yet be the cause of a lasting headache.

- Giles Richards

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, fighting for the drivers' title, reached an angry flashpoint that might overshadow the moment long after the fizz has gone flat.

Beneath the floodlights of the Marina Bay circuit George Russell won the race with a dominant drive from pole to flag for Mercedes, a deserved first win for the British driver in Singapore but one eclipsed by the continuing soap opera at McLaren. Their efforts to maintain an almost impossible level of equality between their title protagonists took another torturous, and many might consider inevitable, turn, since the team set the precedent of potentially intervening each time one driver believed the other had been given a slightly larger slice of cake.

Piastri, the calm, assured Australian who has barely shown even perturbed pique this season, was, as they say in Melbourne, mad as a frog in a sock with his teammate and team after Norris barged past him at the start. The pair finished in the same order, third and fourth behind the Red Bull of Max Verstappen, ensuring Norris took three points off his rival, who leads by 22 with six meetings remaining. There may yet be a reset back at base but at the time Piastri's feelings were clear.