Lando Norris accepted his mistake in F1 Canadian GP, as Oscar Piastri relieved to not get damage, while Andrea Stella acknowledges situation and notes of talks.
Already at the start, McLaren’s Piastri lost to Andrea Kimi Antonelli in F1 Canadian GP, while Norris steadied in seventh but on the hard compound. The Brit managed to lead due to strategy offset and eventually gained on the Australian as the race progressed.
In the last stint, Piastri was trying to clear Antonelli for third, when Norris joined them in the battle. The Brit looked to have decent pace with five laps remaining. He made a move at the hairpin taking the inside line and cleared the Australian. But he came back at the back straight.
With the inside line, Piastri managed to outbrake Norris and retake the position. In a desperate attempt, Norris tried for a move on the left at start/finish line, but there was no space and he hit the back of the Australian to crash out against the wall, which ended his grand prix.
He immediately raised his hand up and accepted his mistake, which he reiterated after the grand prix. He apologised not only to Piastri, but also the team, as the steward handed him a 5s time penalty which was applied in the result as he was classified finisher in 18th place.
It was a big dent to Norris and his title hopes as Piastri stretched his lead even more. The Brit was naturally disappointed after another difficult weekend in his roller coaster ride. He is still optimistic about his chances, as the Australian acknowledged the ‘good boy’ Brit for his apology.
He was relieved that it didn’t cause for major incident, as did team boss Stella, irrespective of the fight if it was for the win and or fourth. The Italian fully backs Norris, but noted that he will hold talks once everybody has cooled down. His attempt cost McLaren key points in their push to win the title.
Stella highlighted McLaren’s culture and ethos, which was on display after Norris duly apologised for his mistake. They didn’t wish to impose team orders as well, since the respect and maturity that they have. He put it down to a misjudgement, which can happen at times.
What happened –
Norris: “I didn’t expect to pass Oscar on the outside into Turn 1. I should never have gone for it, I guess is my complete hindsight thing. I thought he was starting to drift a little bit to the right so I thought I had a small opportunity to go to the left. But it was way too much risk, especially on my teammate. So, happy nothing happened to him and I paid the price for my mistake.”
Piastri: “I mean, I honestly haven’t seen what happened. I obviously felt a bit of a touch, but an unusual place to have an incident, so I still need to have a look. Lando apologised to me, so I guess that says a little bit, but I honestly haven’t seen [it back].”
Stella: “Yes, we said a few times that it wasn’t a matter of if, it was more a matter of when. And 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 a result of a miscalculation, a 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 the fact that Lando immediately owned the situation. He raised his hand. He took responsibility for the accident and he apologized immediately to the team. He came to apologize to me as team principal in order to apologize to the entire team. And it’s important the way we respond and we react to these situations, which ultimately will be a very important learning point. I don’t think it’s a learning from a theoretical point of view because the principle was already there. But it’s a learning in terms of experiencing how painful these situations can be. And this will only make us stronger in terms of our internal competition and in terms of the way we go racing.
“I think in order to make an assessment as to the reason of having this sort of misjudgment from a racing point of view, I think we will have to have a few good conversations. And now that we are in the heat of the moment, for me the most important thing is to see a reaction where people take responsibility of their actions. And we have already seen it. And I talked to Oscar as well and he’s cool with the situation because Lando apologized. He knows that a misjudgment in racing can happen. But I think obviously in the coming days we will have to go into, thanks to these conversations, we will have to go into what is needed in order to make sure that when we go racing we preserve the margins that are required. From Lando’s point of view specifically, I’m not sure that there is any reason to do with the fact that he might have struggled a little bit yesterday in qualifying to capitalize on his speed. The speed that he had demonstrated throughout the weekend. Surely there was a bit of frustration for not having been to qualify as he would have liked. But at the moment I wouldn’t say that that’s the reason why there was a misjudgment today. I think this is too long a shot in terms of correlating these two events. But definitely there will be good conversations, but they will happen once we are all rested and calm and we have the possibility to take all the learning and discharge what doesn’t have to come with us in the future.”
Admission, apology –
Norris: “I do because our rule number one is to not make contact with your teammate and it’s what I did. 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, I have a lot of regret and 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 for me always the worst feeling. Of course, I really need to apologise to all of them and Oscar as well. I just apologised to him.”
Stella: “Look, the fact that the points today or what we were fighting for was not a victory, even if you never know in a race until the chequered flag, I think this is just a very, very minor mitigation, let me say. We act based on principles and based on principles there should be no contact between two McLarens. So from this point of view, if anything, let’s say Lando pays the price from a championship point of view and let me say luckily there was no double penalty with the points lost for the other car, which had no responsibility in this contact. I think in terms of the moving forward and possible repeat or not when we go racing, and there’s many races, like nowadays we go to 24 races and sprints, so more and more situations where we can have these kind of episodes.
“Like I said before, I think having experienced rather than having talked, even if the conversations we had about that, they were certainly strong, impactful and absorbed, but having experienced this kind of situation, I think it will make us just more robust as a team and in terms of each of our two drivers against these situations, because the two McLarens racing close to one another, it will happen again. But there will have to be better judgment in terms of the distance, because today in effect it’s just a matter of distance between the two cars, there’s nothing like one driver wanting to demonstrate something else, like if anything, the dangerous situation was more approaching the last chicane when they were side by side, and I saw some wisdom there. But somehow after that, and we know that with the DRS, there could be some misjudgments that we have seen in the past as well.”
Norris/Piastri reaction/handling –
Norris: “I’m happy he said that. Of course, he’s not going to be happy altogether with what happened. I wouldn’t be either if it was the other way around. So, again, I owe him an apology for taking such a risk. He raced me fairly until that point and close and that’s what you want. So, no one did nothing wrong here, just myself.”
Piastri: “He just said it was his bad. Yeah, definitely, I mean, I think Lando is a very good guy, and I think it’s in his character and in his personality to say exactly what he thinks. 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, so 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. Everything will stay the same. 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 a 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.”
Race, weekend –
Norris: “No, of course not, we didn’t have the pace for pole, Oscar did a good job with a good lap to be P3. In the race, we were probably quicker than expected, I would say which is a big positive for us. Our race pace was quite strong and I felt like, it was quite easy to pass on track, doesn’t really matter at the end of the day when I crashed. I think we have clearly shown bit less in qualifying in the season than in the race, I think that showed today, it is known that qualifying is our weakness as a team, myself too, so we got to work on it.”
Piastri: “Our pace wasn’t great in the first stint on the medium. I think where we came into our own today was when everyone else was degrading, we were good. Unfortunately, we probably needed the race to be about 100 laps and not 70 to take advantage of that. I think we were quick at points and, at other points we didn’t have enough. The whole race, we didn’t really have enough of an advantage, so a bit frustrating.”
In the mind, title scene –
Norris: “Well, I mean, of course, I’ve let down the team, so that’s going to stay with me for a little while. But at the same time, part of moving on is trying to put it behind you and crack on with the next weekend. But we go back to the factory and I go and say hello to the whole team and I’m sure that’s not going to be a nice moment for me because of something like today. But I think the best part of it is nothing happened to Oscar and, yes, shame I have to say that, but that’s the best part of all of it. There’s plenty more races left. I don’t expect it to be easy, I don’t expect to catch him easy, but I have to work hard for it and make less mistakes than I did this weekend.”
Piastri: “It’s still so, so long to go [in the championship] and that points gap is only if Lando wins three races and I finish second with one point in three races again. So, it’s not a comfortable margin at all and that’s not how I want to build the margin. This weekend wasn’t strong enough from myself. I think as a team we also recognised it was a challenging one and we need to be stronger. So, plenty of things to work on and obviously not content finishing fourth.”
Stella: “Well obviously it’s an episode which cost him a championship point, it’s an episode for his own admission, he said the principle was clear, I just made a misjudgment, so he never came to say let’s talk about it. So this may have an impact in terms of his confidence, but it’s up to us as a team to show our full support to Lando, and on this one I want to be completely clear, it’s full support to Lando, we will have conversations and the conversations may be even tough, but there’s no doubt over the support we give to Lando and over the fact that we will preserve our parity and equality in terms of how we go racing at McLaren between our two drivers.
“The situation would be different if Lando would have not taken responsibility and apologised. Lando himself will have to show his character to overcome this kind of episode, make sure that he only takes the learnings, he only takes what will make him a stronger driver and dismisses anything which will be a little bit of residual, a little bit of any influence for the future, which may not simply be good learning and a stronger driver.”
Free to race, if team orders –
Stella: “The being free to race and the being clear as to how we go racing is a value of racing and it’s a value of racing that we want to try and exercise and respect as much as we can. Rather than every time that we have a proximity between the two cars, then having control from the people. I think like that, racing may soon become a bit of an artefact and we want to give Lando and Oscar opportunities to race and opportunities to be at the end of the season in the position that they deserve to be in, based on their merit, based on their performance, based on the racing quality that they have expressed through the season. Rather than being at the end of the season and realise that the points have been controlled more by the team rather than the quality of their driving.
“This is not necessarily a simple and straight exercise, but we want to try and do it as best as we can. So I don’t foresee that today’s episode will change our approach from this point of view. If anything, it will reinforce and it will strengthen that the principles we have require more caution by our drivers. Because if we say that there should be no contact between the two McLarens, we need to have the margins to make sure that we have no contact even if in a DRS situation the car may get almost a little bit sucked onto the other car and cause this kind of misjudgement as to the distance.”
Team culture shown by quick apology –
Stella: “I think you are completely right. In every situation, in the heat of the moment, that looks like the worst disaster ever. But in reality, the strength of being racers, the strength that comes from having a strong culture, is the fact that you will process the episodes, you will review, you will take all the positive learning and you will dismiss anything that doesn’t have to come with us into the way we do racing in the future. This is the mindset that we all have at McLaren and I think this has been proved by the way Lando handled the situation and definitely that’s going to be the kind of conversation that we will not only have with our drivers, but this is the kind of conversations that we will have with the entire team. We lean on our culture, which is very strong, and we use these episodes once they are a little chilled and our mind is colder than it is in the heat of the moment to become a stronger team with two stronger drivers.”
Here’s when they crashed: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-canadian-grand-prix-see-all-the-angles-of-the-dramatic-norris-piastri-clash-in-canada.1835028648683204242
Here’s Oscar Piastri loosing P3: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-canadian-grand-prix-russell-leads-as-antonelli-jumps-piastri-on-the-race-start.1835020304157438572
Here’s how F1 Canadian GP panned out