SPIELBERG, Austria — Lando Norris has insisted that the aftermath of his collision with teammate Oscar Piastri at the Canadian Grand Prix has made McLaren stronger and helped prevent their relationship turning sour.
Norris collided with Piastri while racing for fourth place in Montreal, resulting in Norris retiring from the race with four laps remaining while Piastri escaped unscathed to finish fourth.
The British driver immediately took the blame for the crash over pit-to-car radio, although McLaren still felt the need to sit both drivers down after the race to discuss the incident in full.
“There have been a good amount of talks,” Norris said ahead of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix. “But there’s been good understanding of everything, you know, realising my thoughts and understanding things from both my side and explaining that to the team.
“But I think I made it clear from the immediate moment that I misjudged it, and I took the fault for it. So, yeah, I mean, of course, not the most joyful conversations, but conversations that needed to be had clearly and obviously from us as a team, because it’s not just about myself, it is how we perform as a team and we all know what rule number one was and continues and will always be.
“So, yeah, some very constructive things and in the unfortunate way, but a good way, I think many things have come out stronger than I would say they were prior to the weekend, which you might not expect, but I think is a good outcome.”
Asked what lessons had come from the collision, Norris added: “I think one of the first good lessons was just me taking accountability for it, which I did in the moment. Me owning up, me taking accountability for what happened and responsibility for what happened, I think sets a good example for us as a team.
“Not that I’m here to try and set the best example of how to own up for mistakes, but I think that’s also one of the things that over the last few years we’ve been much, much better at. It’s part of nature and it’s human to make mistakes, is taking responsibility, learning from it and coming forward and improving.”
Norris said it was important for him to take responsibility so that the relationship with his teammate remained stable going into the second half of the year.
Piastri leads Norris by 22 points ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix, and the British driver said it was important to remain civil heading into the second half of the season.
“Between the trust and the honesty I think that Oscar and I have for one another, it’s important that we keep it up, we stay strong as a team because we don’t want to have the downfall that we know many other teams have had in the past,” he added.
“You know, we want to race each other fair and hard and on the limit and not have a repeat of what happened last time out, and that takes both of us, even though Canada was on me. So, yeah, from a mentality point of view, from a constructive point of view, I think that’s why it was positive.”
Piastri said Norris’ apology was enough for him to move on from the clash, and reiterated the need for the two drivers to maintain a healthy relationship.
“It was a misjudgement from Lando that he admitted to and apologised for immediately — I don’t think it needed anything else,” Piastri said. “We knew going into this year that it was probably going to be a close fight between Lando and I with a championship at stake, so it’s no surprise to anyone that we’re kind of in this scenario now.
“Ultimately, just trying to make yourself as fast as possible and do the right things-that’s all you can do. I’ve said it multiple times before, but Lando and I don’t just want one opportunity this year to win a championship. We want this to go on for as long as we’re in Formula 1.
“The headline a few weeks ago was: ‘It’s not wise to fight for a championship or win a championship and bring the house down with it.’ I think that’s still very much at the forefront of our minds, and we want this success for years to come. Having the team united is a very simple way of doing that.”
Source: espn.com