You can write your Papaya Rules on tablets of stone but nobody ever rolled them up the first corner at the Circuit of the Americas.
Instead, at that blind first bend of the opening lap of the US Grand Prix sprint race, a steepling corners where you can take so many lines and numerous traps await, Oscar Piastri collided with his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris.
Piastri cut into Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber, going on two wheels and then into the other orange car.
Norris’s left-rear wheel came tumbling off and went bouncing down the track. Piastri hobbled on a little before he was told his suspension was shot. Both, clearly, were out of the race – the in-house ‘Papaya Rules’ that dictate no contact between the two McLaren men breached again.
And so the debate goes on about how the pair race, following Singapore a fortnight ago, when they hit each other, and how to prevent it, Norris marginally to blame then.
There is not much time for answers with tomorrow’s (Sun’s) showpiece on the way here in Texas. And that same first bend will be as menacing as ever, and clouded minds no clearer.
The sprint was won by Max Verstappen, the Red Bull man gaining eight points to move to within 55 of leader Piastri and moving inch by inch towards the possibility of retaining his title. He almost certainly will succeed in that aim if the McLarens don’t stop getting drawn into one another like magnets.
The DNF was particularly hard for Norris, who remains 22 points off the lead. Piastri can live with the damage. His car is thought to be mendable in time for qualifying for the grand prix itself later today (Sat).
‘Someone just wiped me out, I’m out,’ Norris lamented from the cockpit. He added later: ‘I got hit. What else was I meant to do?
‘I need to look at it a bit more. I just got hit, I got taken out, so not a lot I could have done.’
Piastri said: ‘I’ve not seen the incident from the TV cameras, but obviously I had a pretty good start. We both went pretty deep into Turn One and I tried to cut back, and got a hit, so obviously not a great way to start the day.
‘I need to have another look.’
Zak Brown, McLaren’s chief executive, denied Piastri was to blame, not delaying his emphatic judgment, saying to Sky straight away: ‘That was terrible. Neither of our drivers is to blame there.
‘That’s some amateur-hour driving by some drivers up there at the front. They whacked out two guys.
‘I want to see the replay again but clearly Nico Hulkenberg drove into Oscar and he had no business being where he was. He went into his left-rear tyre.
‘It looks like it was just limited to suspension damage, so hopefully it’s relatively easy to fix.’
Russell took a decent second place for Mercedes, diving on Verstappen before falling back. Carlos Sainz finished third for Williams, having started seventh, with Lewis Hamilton fourth for Ferrari and his team-mate Charles Leclerc fifth.
At McLaren, their problems multiply. They said Norris would face ‘consequences’ for his mistake that inadvertently caused the Singapore crash. What do they do now if Piastri is deemed to have erred?
The saga goes on. Papaya Rules are stretched.
