- Lando Norris admitted to making a foolish mistake after crashing into his McLaren teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri during the closing stages of the Canadian Grand Prix.
- Norris took full responsibility for the incident, expressing regret for letting down his team and making a “fool” of himself.
- Despite the collision, both Norris and McLaren boss Andrea Stella believe the incident will not negatively impact the team’s harmony and will serve as an important learning experience.
Lando Norris did not mince words when discussing his crash with teammate Oscar Piastri at the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday. The British driver slammed into the back of Piastri’s McLaren as they battled for fourth position in the race’s closing stages, ultimately forcing Norris to retire due to the damage.
“Sorry,” Norris said on the radio after the incident. “All my bad. All my fault. Stupid from me.”
In the post-race interviews, a visibly downcast Norris elaborated on his mistake, saying, “I should never have gone for it, it’s my complete hindsight thing. I thought he was starting to drift a little bit to the right, so there was an opportunity to go the left. Way too much risk, especially on my teammate. Happy nothing happened to him, and I paid the price for my mistake.”
Norris, who received a five-second penalty for causing the collision, emphasized the importance of taking ownership of his error. “I do, because our rule, number one is to not make contact with my teammate, and that’s what I did,” he said. “McLaren is my family, I race for them. Every single weekend, I try and do well for them, more than I often try and do well for myself. So when I let them down like this, and when I make a fool of myself in a moment like today, yeah, I have a lot of regret in something like that. I’m not proud of that, and I feel bad and I feel like I let down my team. And that’s always the worst feeling. Of course, I only really need to apologize to all of them and Oscar as well.”
The collision put Norris out of the race, and he now trails championship leader Piastri by 22 points. Piastri, who sustained no obvious damage to his car, managed to hold on to fourth position as the race finished under the safety car.
Norris confirmed that he had already sought out Piastri after the race to apologize personally. Piastri applauded his teammate’s openness, saying, “Lando is a very good guy and I think it’s in his character and in his personality to say exactly what he thinks. And if that’s detrimental to himself, or if it’s about himself, then it doesn’t matter for him and I think that’s a great quality of Lando. I think it is a good quality. I think it’s good for the whole team going forwards that we can have these conversations and go racing like this and have things not go the way we want and get through them. So, yeah, that’s all.”
Despite the incident raising questions about team harmony, Piastri downplayed the suggestion that Norris’ mistake would lead to things unraveling at McLaren. “I think everything will stay the same,” he said. “If it had been a crash in a corner and clearly we got it wrong and too aggressive, then that’s one thing. But it was a bit of an unfortunate incident really on straight effectively. So, for me, I don’t think it will change anything and I think that’s the way it should be because ultimately we’re both trying to fight for a world championship.”
McLaren boss Andrea Stella echoed Piastri’s sentiments, stating that the incident would not have any negative ramifications internally. “We said a few times that it wasn’t a matter of if, it was more a matter of when [they collided],” Stella said. “The when is Canada 2025. We never want to see two McLarens having contact; this is part of our principles. We saw it today. This is just the result of a miscalculation, misjudgment from a racing point of view. Which obviously should not happen but at the same time is part of racing and we did appreciate that Lando immediately owned the situation, raised his hand and took responsibility for the accident, and he apologized to the team, to me as team principal, to apologize to the entire team. It is important the way we respond and react to these situations, which ultimately will be a very important learning point. … It is a learning in terms of experiencing how painful the situations can be and this will only make us stronger in terms of our internal competition and the way we go racing.”
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