McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has said that Lando Norris misjudged his attempt at overtaking teammate Oscar Piastri in the latter stages of the Canadian Grand Prix which resulted in a crash between the pair.
The British driver was fighting his teammate for position at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and headed down the back straight alongside the Australian driver. Having yielded at the final chicane of the lap, Norris got a better drive than Piastri and attempted to get down the inside of Turn 1.
He went for a gap that did not exist and after his front wing made contact with Piastri‘s rear-left wheel, the wing fully detached and sent Norris crashing into the wall and out of the race. He threw away 10 world championship points in the progress and put his own teammate’s race in jeopardy, but did immediately take the blame on the team radio.
Andrea Stella reacts to McLaren crash
Whilst the moment of impact and what it meant for the race was extremely dramatic, incidents of this nature are usually followed by a war of words between drivers and team bosses, but that is not the case here.
Norris‘ admission of guilt took the sting out of the situation, as did the fact that Piastri did not suffer a puncture and was able to secure P4 regardless.
Team boss Andrea Stella spoke to Sky Sports F1 after the race and whilst he admitted that discussions will need to take place, he put the incident down to a simple misjudgement from Norris.
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“We never want to see a McLaren involved in an accident and definitely we never want to see the two McLarens touching each other. It’s something we definitely need to review because this is a very clear principle. At the same time it’s a contact that happened because of a misjudgement. Just Lando misjudged the distance to the car ahead and therefore there was no malintent,” Stella said.
“Lando owned immediately, took responsibility for that, but certainly something to discuss and review. Our principles are already in place, our drivers will have something to learn further and we go racing again.
“It is absolutely a misjudgement that cost Lando quite a lot in the championship. It already cost for the team so definitely an incident that should have not happened.”
What did Piastri and Norris say?
Both of the McLaren drivers have already reacted to the situation and it seems like their relationship will continue without issue. McLaren may want to encourage them to hold on to that attitude given there will certainly be on-track battles between them during the rest of the 2025 season.
Piastri stressed that given Norris has taken responsibility, there is not too much to discuss, saying: “Obviously it’s not ideal for anyone but I haven’t actually seen the incident, so I don’t know what exactly happened. But if Lando has taken full responsibility then that’s how it goes I guess. Just a bit of a tricky race in general and not an ideal finish.”
Norris was clearly very angry at himself for causing the problem, saying after the race: “No one to blame but myself, so I apologise to the whole team and to Oscar as well for attempting something probably a bit too silly. Glad I didn’t ruin his race. In the end apologies to the team. This was just more silly. This wasn’t even like a ‘that’s racing’, it was just silly from my part.”
