After the costly collision between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in Saturday's Sprint, McLaren needed a solid and trouble-free race in the Singapore Grand Prix. They got it: the pair finished fourth and fifth — coincidentally the positions that were lost the previous day, when the crash restricted the team to a single point in the shortened contest.

But there was another element on Sunday demonstrating that lessons have already been learned from the talks that followed the clash, which saw the stewards take no action after ruling that "both drivers had contributed to the incident". Norris admitted his part on Saturday night, saying: "But I did apologise because it was still me attacking, as I had the right to do. If I just sat there and was boring like I should be, nothing would have happened. So really it's still my fault but I deserved to go for the space and I still believe I had the right for it."

"As you probably expect, no-one's very happy. I'm not happy, Oscar isn't happy," he added, before team principal Andrea Stella delivered his own blunt verdict — classifying the collision as "unacceptable".

"I asked if there was anything I could do to help"

At one stage of the Grand Prix, Norris asked the team if there was anything he could do to help Piastri behind, as the Australian tried to recover from an extra stop triggered by a slow puncture.

"Oscar was unfortunate with a puncture," Norris explained afterwards. "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."

Stella sees proof the message has got through

Stella confirmed that the offer was appreciated, and saw it as a clear sign that the message about the team's interests trumping everything else — the key lesson he wanted the drivers to learn from the Sprint — had got through.

"So what we had yesterday, I classified it as unacceptable, which is a statement that comes from the Team Principal," he said. "But I was very encouraged by the fact there is a statement that very rapidly came from our drivers as well, so we are aligned as to how we want to lead this team forward in a joint effort between the team and the drivers.

"The conversations that we are having they are not finished, but it's not because we need to go back discussing if Lando was alongside Oscar – that's not the interesting bit.

"For me, the interesting bit is a reflection that all the stakeholders, the team, the drivers will have to make around leading together the team, embracing constantly from inside the cockpit the interest of the team as something that is superior to any particular singular individual interest, and why the conversations from this point of view they are not concluded, and there's more we can do to become a more united and even stronger team."

On the offer of help from Norris, Stella added: "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."

Soft-tyre call left Hamilton stranded

It was a well-managed race by the team and drivers, with both McLarens starting on the soft tyre — something that gave them an advantage over Lewis Hamilton as the race played out.

"We didn't split the starting tyre between our two drivers because we thought that the medium wasn't a great tyre," explained Stella. "So we wanted to take as maximum advantage as possible in the early phases of the race, including the start and the first lap.

"We thought that the medium might have meant that you could have lost ground compared to the other cars, which I think is actually what happened with Hamilton, and then might have forced you to pit early. So pretty much the race that happened to Hamilton is the race that we did not want to have.

"Once the other cars pitted, we tried to stay out to see if a Safety Car could give us the benefit of the reduced pit delta, which is here is quite powerful. Unfortunately there was no Safety Car, and we pretty much raced for the same position as before the stop. So I think from a strategy point of view, the strategy was overall pretty well managed by our team."

"A fourth and fifth is probably the best we could hope for"

After the flag, Norris admitted that the result was the best the team could realistically have achieved, and Stella agreed with that assessment — while conceding a podium might have been within reach.

"In terms of the result that we could achieve on merit, a fourth and fifth is probably the best we could hope for," he said. "I think we've been helped by the fact that Hamilton degraded massively the tyres, and it became ultimately an easy overtaking for both cars. And this gave us a position.

"At the same time, there's a point of view where, thanks to the racing situations, it would have been interesting to see if Lando could have defended against Antonelli, had he not lost the position while overtaking Hamilton. So there's a point of view whereby today we might have missed a podium finish.

"But considering that we come from a sequence of races in which we haven't scored good points, and we come from a Saturday which has challenged the team from different points of view – including not many points in the Sprint with only one point – I would welcome this result, get the points, and make sure that we reset and we go on to the next triple header with some encouragement.

"And also with some improvements to the car, that hopefully we will be able to deliver with some upgrades."

A familiar balancing act

Sunday's show of unity is the latest chapter in a season-long balancing act. Back at Monza in September, McLaren allowed Norris and Piastri to battle on track as they climbed to fourth and fifth, with Stella blaming the team's qualifying execution — "we should have qualified certainly better than a P6/P8 on the grid" — and demanding "higher standards" rather than criticising the racing itself. In Singapore, though, contact between the two crossed a line, and the response — from the pit wall and now, tellingly, from inside the cockpit — suggests the team believe the balance has been restored heading into the next triple header.

Key takeaways from Singapore:

• Norris and Piastri finished fourth and fifth, recovering the positions lost in Saturday's Sprint collision.
• Norris offered to help Piastri over the radio after the Australian's slow puncture forced an extra stop.
• Stella had branded the Sprint clash "unacceptable" but was "very encouraged" by the drivers' rapid response.
• Both McLarens started on soft tyres, a call that exploited Hamilton's heavy degradation.
• A Safety Car never came, and Stella admitted a podium may have slipped away in the fight with Antonelli.
• Upgrades are hoped for ahead of the next triple header.

The next test of McLaren's new-found unity will come quickly, with a triple header awaiting — and Stella making clear that, radio or not, he expects the team-first mindset to become the default, not the exception. "There's more we can do to become a more united and even stronger team," he said. In Singapore, at least, the first step has already been taken.

Additional context from Saturday's Sprint coverage and McLaren's September Monza weekend.