Lando Norris should have been hit with a stronger punishment by the FIA stewards after causing a collision with Oscar Piastri that ended his race at the Formula 1 2025 Canadian Grand Prix, according to an F1 expert. The McLaren star attempted an audacious overtake on the pit straight but caught his front wing on the back of Piastri’s rear tyre and slammed into the wall, resulting in terminal damage.
Norris took full responsibility for the incident and apologised to Piastri, picking up a five-second penalty from the stewards as he was technically classified despite not finishing the race. However, he managed to avoid receiving a penalty point on his superlicence, which has left some drivers and fans confused given it usually a standard part of the penalty procedure.
Speaking on the Total Motorsport F1 Show, F1 journalist Ewan Gale claimed the Lando Norris punishment was insufficient and admitted the 25-year-old was fortunate to escape with some leniency: “It wasn’t a driving standards issue. It was a misjudgement rather than an egregious [incident],” Gale said.
“He [Norris] hasn’t gone and locked up going all guns blazing into a braking zone and left it too late, swiping someone out of the race. I think five seconds is fine. My issue with the penalty was that there was no penalty points.
“For [almost] every other situation where a driver has been penalised for causing a collision, there has been penalty points. The reasoning the stewards took for that was it had no ‘sporting consequence’. Well, sorry, you’ve got to punish what happened, not what could’ve happened. He caused a collision. A five-second penalty and a penalty point, I could get on board with.”
Some would argue Norris did the worst damage himself by failing to finish the race, having lost further ground to his Australian team-mate in the championship standings, and F1 expert Brandon Sutton thinks that huge loss was a sufficient punishment rather than a penalty as well.
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“I would’ve gone the other way, I wouldn’t have given a penalty at all,” Sutton said. “It’s a DNF in a race and it wasn’t anything particularly dangerous, it was just unfortunate. The punishment is that he’s lost 12 points to his title rival and not scored any himself.”
Norris and Verstappen contrast highlights FIA consistency
While Norris only has three penalty points to his name, Max Verstappen arrived into the Canadian GP weekend with 11 penalty points on his superlicence – just one away from a race ban. And the Dutchman may well have questioned why Norris avoided adding to his tally, despite being found by the stewards to have caused a collision.
Sutton also pointed to the FIA’s inaction on safety car infringements at the end of the race to highlight how inconsistent the world motorsport governing body has been in handing out punishments.
“There is a big inconsistency from the FIA and I think a big part of that is the rules don’t seem to be clearly defined,” Sutton said. “So even the stewards going into the weekend tending not to be entirely sure of previous examples and context, and where exactly the line is.”
Gale agreed, adding: “The rules get added to the regulations without the regulations being edited. Back in 2021, there were rules being broken but also adhered to, because things hadn’t been properly shuffled out of the rulebook.
“We know the racing guidelines are really vague, they need a look at. You’ve got rules in general that aren’t available for public knowledge that need a look at. You’ve got rotational driver stewards which means that it’s almost impossible to get consistency anyway. And we’re on our fourth race director in five years, which isn’t great.
“There’s not going to be consistency when you’ve got all this change, we’re talking about this every weekend and you can see why drivers and fans get frustrated.”
