McLaren driver Oscar Piastri has refused to criticise his teammate after the pair collided in the latter stages of the Canadian Grand Prix, leading to Lando Norris scoring no points.
It was arguably the toughest weekend of the season for McLaren with both drivers failing to get on the front row and then failing to reach the podium places, and it got even worse when 10 championship points were thrown away by Norris on Lap 66 in Montreal.
George Russell was the leader of the race and his only real company proved to be Max Verstappen. Kimi Antonelli had overtaken Piastri on Lap 1 and continued to be chased by the two McLaren‘s as the race progressed. Instead of trying to overtake Antonelli for a place on the podium, Piastri had to focus on defending against Norris and that is where tragedy came for McLaren.
The drama stays on track for McLaren
There are few things more dramatic in Formula 1 than high-profile teammates colliding off-track, but all of the drama in this instance took place on the track between Norris and Piastri at the Canadian GP.
Norris had made a move on Piastri at the hairpin and then, both with DRS, they were side-by-side heading into the final chicane. Piastri remained ahead, and Norris tried to go down the inside towards Turn 1 but chose a gap that did not exist. His front wing touched Piastri’s car and it sent Norris smashing into the wall, whilst Piastri managed to carry on without a puncture.
The Australian would come home behind the safety car in P4, whilst Norris missed out on at least 10 world championship points. Piastri spoke to Sky Sports F1 after the race and he was already aware that Norris had taken full responsibility for the crash on the team radio during the race.
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“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,” Piastri said.
The world championship leader was asked about how fair the battling had been by that stage, and he replied: “I thought it was [fair]. He made quite a large move into Turn 10, held my own into the chicane, and it was definitely a tough battle but a clean one up until that point.
“Again, I’ve not seen the incident, but I don’t think there were any bad intentions involved, I think it was just unfortunate really. I’ll go and have a look obviously but we’re both fighting for a world championship and am very thankful to the team that they allow us to race.
“I don’t expect this to change anything in terms of that. We’ll keep going racing through the year.”
McLaren had a call to make when Norris arrived on the scene, as he clearly had the pace to get past Piastri. They opted to let the two cars race, but this incident could lead to a change of heart should a similar situation present itself in the near future.
