MONTREAL — Lando Norris said he made a fool out of himself after crashing into the back of teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri at the end of the Canadian Grand Prix.
Norris slammed into the other McLaren as they fought for fourth position in the closing stages.
“Sorry,” Norris said on the radio after retiring from the race from the damage. “All my bad. All my fault. Stupid from me.”
Norris said the move was never on.
“I should never have gone for it, it’s my complete hindsight thing,” a downbeat Norris told reporters on Saturday evening. “I thought he was starting to drift a little bit to the right, so there was an opportunity to go the left.
“Way too much risk, especially on my teammate. Happy nothing happened to him, and I paid the price for my mistake.”
When asked about if he felt it important to take ownership of the mistake immediately, he said: “I do, because our rule, number one is to not make contact with my teammate, and that’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, yeah, I have a lot of regret in 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 always the worst feeling. Of course, I only really need to apologize to all of them and Oscar as well.”
The collision put Norris out of the race and means he now trails Piastri by 22 points.
The incident is under investigation, with both drivers set to visit the stewards on Sunday to hear if there will be any further action.
It also meant the race finished under the safety car, with Piastri holding on to fourth position and sustaining no obvious damage to his own vehicle.
Norris confirmed he had already sought out Piastri after the race to say sorry personally.
The championship leader applauded Norris’ openness.
“Lando is a very good guy and I think it’s in his character and in his personality to say exactly what he thinks,” Piastri said. “And 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.
“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.”
Although teammate collisions always raise questions about team harmony, but Piastri downplayed the suggestion Norris’ mistake would lead to things unraveling at McLaren.
“I think 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 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.”
McLaren boss Andrea Stella said the incident would not have any negative ramifications internally.
“We said a few times that it wasn’t a matter of if, it was more a matter of when [they collided]. The when is Canada 2025. We never want to see two McLaren’s having contact, this is part of our principles. We saw it today.
“This is just the result of a miscalculation, misjudgement from a racing point of view. Which obviously should not happen but at the same time is part of racing and we did appreciate that Lando immediately owned the situation, raised his hand and took responsibility for the accident, and he apologised to the team, to me as team principal, to apologise to the entire team.
“It is important the way we respond and react to these situations which ultimately will be a very important learning point…it is a learning in terms of experiencing how painful the situations can be and this will only make us stronger in terms of our internal competition and the way we go racing.”
Source: espn.com