McLaren offers “full support” to Norris after F1 Canadian GP collision

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella offered his “full support” to Lando Norris after his driver took the blame for colliding into his Formula 1 team-mate Oscar Piastri during the Canadian Grand Prix.

After fighting wheel to wheel for fourth place over several laps, Norris closed in on Piastri along the start-finish straight with four laps remaining out of 70.

Norris then made an error of judgement as he attempted to pass Piastri on the left into a closing gap, driving into the back of his team-mate and then hitting the pitwall to suffer terminal suspension damage.

The Brit immediately owned up to his mistake over team radio, saying it was “all on me” as he suffered a big points loss in the drivers’ championship, and he also later apologised in person to Stella and Piastri, who escaped damage to finish fourth.

Responding to the incident, McLaren boss Stella said the team would have internal conversations on how to avoid a repeat, but he offered support to Norris as he immediately shouldered responsibility for the clash.

“It’s up to us as a team to show our full support to Lando,” Stella said. “We will have conversations and the conversations may be even tough, but there’s no doubt over the support we give to Lando.

“The situation would be different if Lando would have not taken responsibility and apologised. This is just a result of a miscalculation, a 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 the fact that Lando immediately owned the situation. He raised his hand. He took responsibility for the accident, and he apologised immediately to the team.

“How we react to these situations will ultimately be a very important learning point. In the coming days, 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.”

Stella didn’t believe any lingering frustration from Norris over his botched qualifying session, which left him facing a comeback race from seventh on the grid, played part in the incident.

“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 capitalise on his speed, a speed that he had demonstrated throughout the weekend,” Stella added.

“Surely, there was a bit of frustration for not having been able to qualify as he would have liked. But at the moment, I wouldn’t say that that’s the reason why there was a misjudgement 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.”