McLaren’s Lando Norris believes his failed move that ultimately ended in a collision with his team-mate Oscar Piastri at the final stages of the 2025 F1 Canadian GP was “stupid”, and that he should have “never gone for it” in hindsight.
Norris managed to make a bold move down the inside of his team-mate into the turn 10 hairpin, before engaging in a battle with Piastri all the way down the back-straight, and the final chicane, that ended with the Briton clipping the left-rear tyre of the Australian in the main straight and hitting the wall alongside the pit exit, in a similar incident to then McLaren team-mates Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton at the 2011 Canadian GP.
Whilst Piastri escaped without damage, Norris’ race was over after he broke the entire front-left axle in his McLaren and lost his front wing, bringing out a late safety car.
Norris admits his overtake attempt was “stupid”
The Briton immediately recognised and took blame for the incident over the radio – which team principal Andrea Stella believes was key to avoid “serious conversations” – and went even further in his apologetic manners in the media pen after the race, calling his move “stupid”:
“I thought Oscar [Piastri] would move a bit more to the right, [but he didn’t] to not leave a gap obviously,” Norris told F1TV. “I don’t expect anything to be easy from him, but I just misjudged it.
“It was all my mistake, and I take full blame. I apologise to my whole team and to Oscar, for attempting something like that.
“There’s ‘going for it’ like [I did] in the hairpin, a good, fair move,” he explained. “Then there’s being stupid, like I was at the end.”
Letting McLaren down required immediate apologies
Speaking to written media, Norris admitted that he “should have never gone for it” in hindsight, and explained that his immediate apologies came from the fact that he races for McLaren first and foremost, and not for himself:
“I don’t expect to pass Oscar on the outside into Turn 1, and I should never have gone for it, I guess it’s my complete hindsight thing,” he said. “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.
“I’m happy nothing happened to him, and I paid the price for my mistake.
“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 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.”
The “best part” of the clash
Norris, who last won an F1 race at last month’s Monaco GP, admitted this moment will “stay” in his mind for a while, but said he is keen to rebound from this and meet the team back at the factory in the next few days, even if it may prove a bit awkward following the incident at the Canadian GP:
“Of course, I’ve let down the team, so that’s going to stay with me for a little while,” he admitted. “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. 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.
“That’s the best part of all of it.”
Piastri downplays impact of “unfortunate” incident
On the receiving end of the incident was the championship leader Oscar Piastri, who downplayed the impact of the clash, and labelled it as an “unfortunate incident” that will not change the way they go racing from now on:
“I obviously felt a bit of a touch,” he said. “[It is] an unusual place to have an incident, so I still need to have a look.
“Lando’s apologised to me, so I guess that says a little bit, but I honestly haven’t seen much.
“I think everything will stay the same,” Piastri said when asked how to move forward from this incident. “If there had been a crash in a corner, and clearly we got it wrong and [were] 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 satisfied with what we’re doing.”
Piastri says Norris’ “great quality” shone through after the incident
The Australian was full of praise for his team-mate’s honest approach to taking the blame straight away, which he believes is a “great quality” to have around in the McLaren team, saying the Briton is a “very good guy”:
“I mean, I think Lando is a very good guy,” he said. “And I think it’s in his character and in his personality to say exactly what he thinks, even if that’s detrimental to himself, or if it’s about himself, 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 forward, so that we can have these conversations and go racing like this, and have things not go the way we want, and get through them.”
“Not how I want to build a margin” in the championship
After the Canadian GP, Piastri is now on 198 points in the F1 drivers’ world championship, 22 points clear of his Norris. When asked about the extent of his margin following the DNF for his team-mate, the championship leader downplayed the nature of the gap, explaining that it could be gone in as little as three races time:
“It’s still so, so long to go, and that points gap is only, I don’t know, if Lando wins three races and I finish second, it’s one point in three races again,” he explained. “So it’s not [much] 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.”
