Norris 'made a fool' of himself in Piastri collision

The Canadian Grand Prix was the first race this season a McLaren driver has not finished on the podium

Lando Norris said he "made a fool" of himself in colliding with McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri in the Canadian Grand Prix.

The 25-year-old Briton ran into the back of Piastri as they battled in the closing stages of the race, and Norris' mistake has left him 22 points behind the Australian in their fight for the championship.

Norris, with use of the DRS overtaking aid giving him a straight-line speed advantage, clipped the back of Piastri's car as he tried to grab the inside line into Turn One.

But Piastri had not left the space for the move to come off. Norris' front wing and right-front wheel hit the back of the rival McLaren and broke his suspension. Piastri was able to continue without damage.

Norris said: "I didn't expect to pass Oscar on the outside into Turn One. It's just, 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 team-mate.

"So, happy nothing happened to him. I paid the price for my mistake."

The incident followed more than a kilometre of close racing between the team-mates, which McLaren have pledged to allow to continue this season.

Norris has 'a lot of regret'

Norris had dived for the inside at the hairpin and briefly grabbed the position as both were challenging Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli for the final podium position behind winner George Russell's Mercedes and Max Verstappen's Red Bull.

Piastri cut back on the exit, and they ran side by side down the long back straight, with the Australian on the inside. Norris braked earlier on the outside for the final chicane, to give himself a cleaner run through the corner and faster exit on to the pit straight.

It was terrific, clean, respectful racing, of the kind McLaren have been demanding from their drivers this season. Until it went wrong.

Norris said: "Our rule number one is to not make contact with your team-mate and it's what I did. McLaren is my family. I race for them, you know, 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.

"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."

Norris had no realistic option but to accept fault, but that does not always make a difference with racing drivers. And his decision to do so immediately defused any tension there might have been as a result of the incident.

Piastri said: "Lando is a very good guy, and it's in his character and in his personality to say exactly what he thinks. 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.

"It's good for the whole team going forward that we can have these conversations and go racing like this and have things not go the way we want, and get through them."

Both men minimised the importance of the difference this had made to the gap between them in the championship, which is more than double what it was going into the race, but still with 14 races left and only 10 gone.

Norris said: "Plenty more races left. I don't expect it to be easy. I don't expect to catch him easily. But I have to work hard for it and make less mistakes than I did this weekend."

'No doubt' McLaren support Norris

McLaren are taking a mature, sporting and open approach to the fight between their drivers, based on a philosophy of fair competition. They have been saying all year that they considered it a question of when not if they were involved in an incident.

It was in this spirit that team principal Andrea Stella took the situation.

"We never want to see two McLarens having contact," he said. "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 apologised immediately to the team. He came to apologise to me as team principal in order to apologise to the entire team.

"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 had not taken responsibility and apologised.

"In the heat of the moment, that looks like the worst disaster ever. But in reality, the strength of being racers comes from having a strong culture."

Where does Norris go from here?

Despite his retirement in Montreal, Lando Norris stays second in the drivers' championship, 21 points clear of Max Verstappen in third

Taking a step back from the immediacy of the drama, the bigger concern may be what it says about Norris and his state of mind - and raise questions as to what to do about it.

This has not been an easy season for Norris so far. He was very much McLaren's leading driver last year. He was the one who took a semblance of a title fight to Verstappen in the closing stages of the season.

In the expectation that McLaren would continue their strong form in the second half of last year into this, Norris was the championship favourite going into the season.

Instead, the form between the two McLaren drivers has switched. Piastri has been the more convincing. He has five wins to Norris' two. He is ahead 8-4 on their qualifying head-to-head. And Norris has been making mistakes, particularly in qualifying.

Norris has been saying all year that a lack of feel from the front axle of the car has been affecting his ability to predict its behaviour when taking it to the limit on one lap.

In Canada, McLaren introduced a small tweak to the suspension geometry, around where the upper wishbone meets the front wheel, in an attempt increase feel. Stella said there were "no downsides from Lando's point of view", and Norris ran it all weekend. Piastri felt he didn't need it and continued with the original specification.

Norris was probably the quicker McLaren driver in Montreal - he did a stunning lap on used tyres to progress beyond the first part of qualifying. But he again over-drove when it mattered, making mistakes on both of his laps in the final session, and ending up seventh on the grid.

Stella said after qualifying that Norris had "just tried too hard", and pointed out that on his final lap he was on target for pole before brushing the wall at Turn Seven.

"The speed is there," Stella said on Saturday evening. "We just have to polish the fact that sometimes you sort of have to accept that you can't always go 100%, especially when a little mistake can be so costly."

Stella has emphasised that McLaren have been working with Norris on his difficulties this year.

After the race, he was asked what more they could do to get him into the right headspace, if that was indeed the problem. But he said he did not see a connection between Norris' wider issues and the specifics of the collision in Canada.

"At the moment I wouldn't say that that's the reason why there was a misjudgment today," Stella said. "I think this is too long a shot in terms of correlating these two events.

"Definitely there will be good conversations, but they will happen once we are all rested and calm.

"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."