Lando Norris mocked by F1 insider over 'cringe' Oscar Piastri moment

Former F1 team principal Guenther Steiner has mocked Lando Norris for some radio messages during the Singapore Grand Prix that many saw as performative.

The Brit had taken something of a hammering in the media over the previous 24 hours after hitting his team-mate Oscar Piastri on the last lap of the weekend's Sprint race while they were fighting for fourth place, and appeared eager to make amends.

With Norris in fourth place late in the race and Kimi Antonelli disappearing up the road in third, the McLaren driver started radioing his team more than once to ask if they needed him to drop back and help Piastri catch Lewis Hamilton for fifth.

The team declined and, in the event, Piastri passed the ailing Ferrari with a lap remaining anyway, even stretching out a lead of three-and-a-half seconds by the chequered flag.

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Steiner: Don't be cocky

Former Haas boss Steiner told the Red Flags podcast that he believes Norris' offers of help were sincere, but that he was overplaying his cards, saying: “I think [the messages] were sincere but he overdid that.

"They they were not fake, I must say. But he was overdoing it. And I was like, this is actually what the young people call it cringe. This is cringe, you know.”

He was a little less diplomatic earlier in the podcast when asked how he would've responded after the sprint race if Norris refused to apologise for the crash, saying: "You're a f***ing idiot. You were the world champion. You will not be this year. So, I mean, you know, it's like don't be cocky about it.”

Norris and Stella address offers of help

Norris addressed the radio messages after the race, saying: "Oscar was unfortunate with a puncture. I also had a few problems with the car myself, so there was more of an opportunity to get more points and get Oscar back up the order than there was for me to catch Kimi [Antonelli], because I couldn't.

“And I saw there was like three, four cars in between. So I asked, but I didn't need to in the end, and we still got the best points we could as a team.”

Team principal Andrea Stella at least appeared mollified by the gesture, saying after the race: “I'm pleased that Lando, at some stage in the race, adopted this way of thinking. This is what I expect.

“This is what the one thousand people that work at McLaren expect from our drivers, so it's good that we have had this example, and I expect definitely more of that in the future, independently of the fact that they will be heard in the radio or they will happen behind the closed door in every meeting, or in the way we approach our race plan.”

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