Norris vows to make better decisions after McLaren hold fresh talks over Piastri clash

Lando Norris has pledged to make “better decisions” after McLaren held further internal talks over his collision with team-mate Oscar Piastri in the Singapore Grand Prix sprint race — an incident the team now considers closed.

Norris drew the frustration of team management when he lunged for fourth place in the Singapore sprint, taking out both himself and Piastri and costing McLaren valuable championship points. Team principal Andrea Stella had indicated after the race that further discussions would take place at the team’s Woking factory, and those talks are understood to have occurred last week.

“I take responsibility for my mistakes, and I learn from them,” Norris said in McLaren’s United States Grand Prix preview. “This team is my motivation every weekend, and my aim is to repay the hard work everyone puts in by improving, making better decisions, and representing the team in the best possible way.”

The Singapore clash came at the end of a difficult triple-header for McLaren, during which the team had no answer for the performance upgrades Red Bull brought to its car. Max Verstappen took back-to-back victories in Malaysia and Singapore, while Ferrari also showed considerable strength on the high-downforce Singapore street circuit and Mercedes added performance of its own.

Stella acknowledged the scale of the challenge but struck a forward-looking tone. “After a difficult triple-header, we take the lessons learned from both our performance and execution and put them into action,” he said. “In F1, success is never guaranteed — so our response is to keep building, keep developing, and keep pushing forward together as one team.”

McLaren arrives at this weekend’s race in Austin with a modest package of upgrades for the MCL40, largely focused on the front of the car. The team is hopeful that the Circuit of the Americas will suit its car better than Baku and Singapore did. Further tweaks have also been applied to improve driver confidence under braking.

“We’re bringing a modest selection of upgrades for this event, aimed at improving some braking reliability and performance issues,” said chief designer Rob Marshall.

With the constructors’ championship battle intensifying, McLaren will be eager to restore momentum at a circuit that could play more to the MCL40’s strengths — and to see Norris and Piastri working in the same direction rather than against each other.