F1 hell could erupt as Ricciardo re-ignites conspiracy; Max rival’s biggest statement yet: Talking Pts

At no point in the race — or all weekend in fact — was Lando Norris not the man to beat at Marina Bay, but the scale of his Sunday superiority was breathtaking all the same.

It shouldn’t have been entirely surprising. McLaren, though it denies it, has had the fastest car in Formula 1 for months, and Norris was racing the same high-downforce package with which he dominated by a similar magnitude the Dutch Grand Prix in August.

The bigger surprise was that Max Verstappen was second in a race the team has been braced to lose badly ever since it was humbled by this track last season.

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Verstappen ably limited the damage, finishing second ahead of Oscar Piastri, who had Norris-level pace in clear air but left himself too much to do after qualifying fifth in a scrappy Q3.

The Australian’s strong evening propelled McLaren to a 41-point lead in the constructors championship heading into the final six rounds.

The gap from Verstappen to Norris has shrunk to 52 points.

“Definitely the drivers championships is still on,” McLaren principal Andrea Stella told Sky Sports after Lando Norris dominated the Singapore Grand Prix. “The mission is still on.”

NORRIS MAKES STATEMENT BUT STILL FALLS SHORT

Wins don’t come much more emphatic than that.

This was a statement drive by Norris, greater than even the home defeat he inflicted on Verstappen to open the second phrase of the season in Zandvoort.

For the first time in his career he managed to hold the lead after launching from pole. At the eighth time of asking, the Briton finally banished that first-lap demon.

It made his race tremendously straightforward.

His pace was so strong that he’d broken the risk of an undercut in less than 10 laps. By the time he made his first pit stop he was able to change tyres without losing the lead.

His margin was 30 seconds late in the second stint before he lost some time lapping backmarkers.

Verstappen quipped afterwards that even he feared being lapped by the outrageously quick Norris.

After a month of talk about team orders, about Piastri’s growing stature in the team, about his lack of killer instinct, about his constitution for the title, this was a hell of a result.

Only Norris could undo Norris’s day. Twice he brushed up against the barriers, risking a puncture or worse, underlining how hard he was pushing — highly unusual in Singapore, a race normally won with pace management to bunch up the field and neutralise strategy.

The now three-time race winner had no time for that. He was prepared to kill the race with pure performance.

But it wasn’t enough.

Norris needed a perfect — absolutely perfect — final seven races ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix to win the championship on countback in Abu Dhabi.

That meant every grand prix, every sprint and every fastest lap.

He got the win, and in dominant fashion, but after holding the fastest lap for most of the race — and what would have been a rare career grand slam — he had the bonus point taken from him on the final lap.

Daniel Ricciardo, who finished 18th and last, set the quickest time at the death — and, rightly, that’s massively controversial.

RICCIARDO POINT REIGNITES RED BULL CONTROVERSY

If this was Ricciardo’s final act as a grand prix driver, his last race could be remembered for causing considerable controversy,

The Australian was on a hiding to nothing on Sunday night. He started 16th on the soft tyre, and when he couldn’t make any places off the line and when there was no safety car, he was effectively committed to an early pit stop that would send his race spiralling to a second stop that guaranteed him last place among the finishers — not the first time he’s been on the wrong side of an RB strategy.

With nothing to gain and even less to lose, on the third-last lap he was brought into pit lane again for another set of soft tyres.

The intention was clear: set the fastest lap.

Was it to give Ricciardo something to celebrate on a grim night?

Or was this Red Bull Racing’s sister team taking a point away from Verstappen’s title rival and McLaren, changing the championship complexion?

Denying Norris the point for fastest lap means the Briton can still have a perfect season — win every race and sprint and take every point for fastest lap — and still lose the title in Abu Dhabi. Verstappen needs only to finish second to Norris all the way to December to seal the deal.

The title is now out of Norris’s hands.

“I don’t mean this against Lando, but part of me is hoping Max wins by one point, because I think I guaranteed myself a really nice Christmas present if so,” Ricciardo laughed to Sky Sports, acknowledging the situation.

“Obviously it’s with a little bit of Red Bull in mind, but maybe to have one last crack at doing a fast one — if it’s to be it.”

RB’s common ownership with Red Bull Racing has occasionally triggered some uncomfortable questions for the sport. Sometimes it’s been about the junior team not rigorously pursuing penalties against drivers at the senior team. At other times it’s been about Red Bull wielding twice the political power in votes over rule changes.

But this is perhaps the most overt example of RB appearing to influence the championship in favour of the senior team on both title tables.

It’s something McLaren CEO Zak Brown foresaw at the beginning of the year, opening the can of worms in January.

“This A/B team and co-ownership, which is a whole other level of A/B team, is of big concern to us and the health of the sport and the fairness of the sport,” he said, per ESPN.

“I believe it’s a serious issue for the fairness of the sport, for the fans. That’s why it’s pretty much not allowed in any other form of major sport.

“I’d like to see us as an industry focus on that before it gets to a level of being where Formula 1 once was, which is very out of balance, because people are playing by the rules but a different set of rules.”

It’s unlikely this single point will make a difference in the championship fight.

But if it does, McLaren will be justified in raising hell.

THIS WAS NO FAIR SIGN-OFF FOR RICCIARDO

Controversy aside, the Singapore Grand Prix was not a sign-off worthy of Ricciardo’s career.

Forget about the performance. RB wasn’t worthy of points this weekend despite a typically strong qualifying result for Yuki Tsunoda. Ricciardo’s race was subsequently hindered by a strategy gamble hoping for a safety car that never came.

It’s the fact that an eight-time grand prix winner seems certain to be shuffled to the sidelines with no official acknowledgment, no send-off and no respect.

That this silent farewell has come after what seems to have been a week of genuine uncertainty for the Australian — who in the space of two months went from thinking he would be replacing Sergio Pérez to being braced to be unceremoniously turfed from his seat — only adds insult to injury.

Of course there’s little room for sentiment in Formula 1, and the Red Bull program has a particular reputation for ruthlessness.

Drivers aren’t entitled to drive if they don’t perform, and Ricciardo has been open about failing to meet his own expectations. Few would have been surprised to see him dropped at the end of the season.

You can even mount a credible argument to drop him this week. If RB has resolved to bring in Liam Lawson next year, it may as well get him a head start in its inconsistent car to help him hit the ground running in 2025.

But to string Ricciardo along for the week, to allow him to qualify and race for the final time without knowing for certain — and without his fans knowing for certain — comes across as heartless.

Ricciardo might have spent the second half of his career battling in the midfield, but he’s no journeyman.

He’s an eight-time grand prix winner who in his pomp could beat any driver on the grid. Whose racing style is a natural highlights generator. Whose character cut through what was, in his early years certainly, still a stuffy, conservative and closed sport.

Ricciardo gave much to Red Bull Racing during its fallow inter-title years. He also gave much to Formula 1 as one of its highest profile drivers, becoming central to the Drive to Survive phenomenon that’s been the foundation of the sport’s new global popularity.

“A lot of emotions, because I’m aware it could be it,” an emotional Ricciardo said after the race. “I’m also just exhausted after the race.

“There’s a flood of many emotions and feelings and exhaustion. The cockpit is something that I got very used to for many years.

“I just wanted to savour the moment.”

It’s a shame Ricciardo’s fans — many of them home fans having travelled from Australia — weren’t given the opportunity to savour seeing him in action for seems likely to be the final time.

Instead he’ll be farewelled by press release sometime in the next three weeks.

In the paddock after the race guests of RB hospitality formed an impromptu guard of honour for the Australian.

RB team principal Laurent Mekies was among those applauding. Mekies bizarrely told SiriusXM that he was also looking forward to clarity over the situation, acknowledging that it must have been hard for his driver to get through the weekend.

That the team boss couldn’t offer certainty speaks to a broader dysfunction in the whole process.

At least, reading the room, F1’s viewing public voted him as driver of the day.

“Typically the driver of the day thing is not something us drivers put too much into, but today I can say it’s something I’m appreciative of,” he told Sky Sports. “That one today means a little something.”

FRANCO COLAPINTO SHOWS UP SERGIO PÉREZ IN THIRD GRAND PRIX

A final note for Franco Colapinto, who continues to massively impress in his sudden Formula 1 elevation.

The Argentine’s race started with a bang, making a gutsy move into the first turn to rise from 12th to ninth.

Teammate Alex Albon complained over team radio that he’d been dive-bombed and made to lose positions, but replays suggest he had little about which to be unhappy. Perhaps he’d simply become used to racing a teammate who couldn’t get close enough to pass him — with no disrespect to Logan Sargeant.

The move made Colapinto’s race and came achingly close to delivering him points.

He spent the first stint defending his place from Sergio Pérez, driving what should have been a substantially faster Red Bull Racing car. The Mexican lamented that the rookie was “very good, difficult to pass”.

It took an undercut to get Pérez ahead of the lowly Williams, but even then he couldn’t break away.

For the duration of the race Colapinto clung close to Pérez’s gearbox, threatening to deprive the Mexican of what turned out to be the final point of the race after Carlos Sainz recovered from his poor start.

Pérez will point to the fact he was held up behind Nico Hülkenberg for most of the second stint, but that only suggests a lack of incisiveness behind the wheel at a track that was supposed to bring out his better qualities.

Instead he was lucky to finish ahead of a driver competing in their third race.

It speaks to the quality of race both drivers had — and to the driver line-up dilemma still occupying minds at Red Bull Racing, where the constructors championship is slipping further out of reach thanks largely to the driver who’s scored 13 points in the last four grands prix.