Juan Pablo Montoya attributed the collision between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris during the Sprint at the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix to McLaren's papaya rules, framing those team directives as the underlying cause. At Marina Bay the weekend prior, a late-lap move by Norris on Piastri left both McLaren drivers short of the points each had been tracking toward, exposing a rift between the pair and their team.
Approaching Turn 5, Norris identified a gap to move past Piastri into fourth place, only for Piastri to hold his line and the two cars to make contact. Contact between Piastri and Norris sent Piastri's car into a spin, and a barrier impact brought his F1 Sprint race in Singapore to an immediate end. Norris managed to recover and rejoin the race, ultimately taking eighth place and a single championship point at a moment when McLaren had been on course for nine.
Both Zak Brown and Andrea Stella — McLaren's chief executive and team principal respectively — raised formal objections to the contact Norris made with Piastri during the Singapore Formula 1 Sprint, a moment that yielded Norris a single point in the championship standings yet left the constructor without eight points it would otherwise have held. Those within the McLaren organisation are said to have noted that Brown's visible distress over the Singapore collision between Norris and Piastri surpassed anything of that nature they had previously seen from him.
Montoya's view, as reported, is that placing responsibility solely on Norris overlooks a broader reality — no driver in Piastri's position would have committed to that corner assuming team protocols would compel a teammate to yield. Speaking to a broadcaster, Montoya put forward the view that the papaya rules were what prompted Norris to leave space on the outside for Piastri — and that, without them, another driver in that same position would probably have held a tighter line.
Montoya's account of the incident held that Norris drew level with Piastri under braking, came close enough to challenge, and operated on the belief that Piastri would yield the place. Releasing the brakes on the outside line, Piastri surged forward to hold his place in the running order. With both competitors driving at racing pace, responsibility for the incident was not assigned to either party.
Montoya attributed the situation to the papaya rules, arguing that those regulations create an assumption among drivers that a teammate is not a legitimate target. He also noted that pointing the finger at a teammate after falling short is one way a driver can respond to defeat, and raised the question of what outcomes might follow from treating the incident as ordinary racing.
In Montoya's framing, taking the same approach into the corner would have left Norris without space on the way out. Norris eased off at that juncture — a choice characterised afterwards as a composed reaction from a driver prepared to follow team guidance — though Montoya argued that almost any other racer placed in that same situation might have kept the brake applied and initiated contact, given that Piastri was on the inside and running side by side, leaving no room to avoid the tyre wall.
Montoya's observation also points to the Singapore Sprint incident, where Piastri held his line through the Turn 5 entry without yielding room, leaving Norris — who had drawn fully level by that point — squeezed onto the inside kerb. At that point, Norris faced two paths: apply the brakes hard, which he did, or release them and attempt to clear the kerb without making contact. Piastri held his position rather than yielding to the pass, which came through a late braking move at a corner where overtaking rarely occurs. Piastri fought to hold the car on the tightest possible arc through the turn.
Stewards were expected to address Norris over the incident, with the team's internal conduct framework cited as grounds — he had not followed the established protocol. Between the two drivers, one managed the team's protocol with tactical discipline across the race, while the other interpreted those same guidelines more loosely and held position through the closing lap. The matter was subsequently resolved between the two parties.
The quote aside, McLaren's team orders drew widespread attention in 2025 after Norris reversed a points deficit against Piastri to claim the drivers' championship. McLaren's leadership — Brown and Stella — established a set of protocols governing how Norris and Piastri are expected to conduct themselves when racing one another, with collective team objectives taking precedence over either driver's individual ambitions. At the Singapore Sprint's closing lap, Norris opted to challenge Piastri for a position that carried no points or championship weight, a move that drew attention to where his priorities lay that afternoon.
