Brown has final say on Norris and Piastri's Singapore GP blunder

The two McLaren drivers collided on the final lap of the Sprint at Marina Bay, when Norris attempted to overtake Piastri for fourth place at Turn 5. Both drivers spun following the contact, with the Australian hitting the barriers and retiring from the race. Norris managed to continue and eventually finished eighth.

The incident prompted discussions within McLaren, with team principal Andrea Stella making clear that contact between the team's two cars was unacceptable. Brown has now revisited the matter, explaining that while the team was disappointed by what happened, it must also accept the realities of having two competitive drivers racing alongside each other.

Speaking to Sky Sports, the McLaren CEO said: "It was obviously unfortunate. But when you have racing drivers, these things are gonna happen."

Brown also pointed to the amount of time Norris and Piastri have spent competing as teammates, suggesting that incidents of this nature become increasingly difficult to avoid: "You don't like when it happens. Of course, we discussed it. Hope it won't happen again, but I think it would be naive to think that, at some point, they won't, as they say, rub. It's racing."

Despite accepting that collisions can occur, Brown reiterated that the contact between Norris and Piastri was avoidable, particularly given the potential consequences for the team: "You deal with it. You learn from it. You're not happy with it. It was unnecessary. The risk was bigger than the reward."

The American also stressed the importance of quickly putting disappointing results behind the team, particularly during a busy sequence of races on the Formula 1 calendar: "We move on and, with these sequences of races, you've got to forget about last week and get stuck into the next one."

McLaren made a decent start to the United States Grand Prix weekend, with Lando Norris finishing third in FP1 at the Circuit of the Americas, 0.245 seconds behind pace-setter Charles Leclerc. Oscar Piastri, meanwhile, ended the session seventh, 0.734 seconds off the Ferrari driver. Read the full FP1 report here.