McLaren's Norris in a class of his own at Marina Bay

Payback comes in many forms, sometimes helpful, sometimes as retribution. For Lando Norris, it came in the most benign form as McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri played his own early role in helping him to his third victory of the year.

- David Tremayne

Norris was dizzy enough afterwards to welcome water poured over his head by thoughtful interviewer David Coulthard, but still compos mentis after a traditionally brutal race to savour bringing Max Verstappen's world championship lead down to 52 points, and McLaren's advantage over Red Bull up to 41 in the constructors' race.

If there was hair on McLaren's cake, with Piastri doing a sterling job to take third, it was the unexpected upswing in Red Bull's performance as Verstappen took second, albeit an outclassed 20.9 seconds behind.

While the margin here was embarrassing, the signs are that from now on the troublesome RB20 may have been massaged back into competitive form which could leave them in good stead in the remaining six events. We'll see.

The team that should have provided the strongest opposition were Ferrari, but their chances all but evaporated with Carlos Sainz's crash in Q3 and the resultant red-flag stoppage which compromised teammate Charles Leclerc.