Norris laughed at how bad Verstappen’s car was in qualifying 

The McLaren driver finished second behind Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz on a weekend Red Bull were unexpectedly off the pace as they saw their unbeaten streak in 2023 come to an end. 

Red Bull had won all 14 races this year prior to Singapore but Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez were both dumped out of Q2 in what was a horrible qualifying session. 

Despite their performance struggles, Verstappen managed to salvage fifth in Sunday’s race, while Perez recovered to eighth. 

Speaking in the post-race press conference, Norris revealed he and Verstappen had shared a laugh about Red Bull’s woes after qualifying. 

“I don’t know what they struggled with but when I watched his [Verstappen’s] onboard yesterday I kind of laughed because I've never seen a car that bad before,” Norris said. 

“Max also laughed about it. We'll see next weekend, I think they'll be back at the top.”

Norris argued the season would have been much more exciting without Red Bull’s dominance.  

“If Red Bull weren’t here I’d have had two race wins already,” he added.

“I think there's always been great battles for sometimes that best of the rest pack. Now the best of the rest is, I wouldn't say it's just us, I don’t Aston Martin are that far behind. 

“They were at the beginning of the season very close but have dropped off. AlphaTauri were very quick this weekend, just didn’t put it together when they needed to. So I think that’s great.

"Often if you didn't have the best team there - the best team always seems to dominate and take away the show from the rest of it.

"But if you took away Mercedes a few years ago and you take away Red Bull now, the battles for the rest of the positions have been incredible and many different winners every race or every season. 

“And even for us this year, if we could compete a bit more against Red Bull, Mercedes would have won, Ferrari would have won. We potentially could have won in Silverstone and Budapest. 

“So yeah, I have dreamed a little bit but I'm sure they are going to be back on back on track next weekend.”