‘Made a fool of myself': Lando Norris full of remorse for crashing into Aussie teammate Piastri

Sydney Morning Herald

5 hours ago

'Lando has apologised to me and that says a little bit,' said the Australian. 'He said it was his bad.
'Lando is a very good guy and it is in his character and personality to say what he thinks, even if that is detrimental to himself. This is a great quality for Lando. It is good for the team going forward that we can have these conversations and race like this and have things not go the way we want and [still] get through them.'
Norris, whose mental strength has been questioned this season following a number of qualifying errors, said he would try to bounce back immediately, with the next race coming up in Austria in a fortnight.
'Of course, 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,' he said.
'But, you know, we go back to the factory and I go and say hello to the whole team and I'm sure that's not going to be a nice moment for me, because of something like today, but you know, I think the best part of it is nothing happened to Oscar.'
Asked how he felt about his championship chances, Norris added: 'Plenty more races left. I don't expect it to be easy. I don't expect to catch him easy. I have to work hard for it and make less mistakes than I did this weekend.'
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella admitted the incident could affect Norris's confidence but stressed that the team would stand by the Englishman.
'This may have an impact in terms of his [Norris's] confidence, but it's up to us as a team to show our full support to Lando, and on this one, I want to be completely clear, it's full support to Lando.
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'We will have conversations, and the conversations may even be 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 would have not taken responsibility and apologised.'
What happened?
The two drivers were given licence to race each other by McLaren as they both chased a podium finish.
​Lap 62
With Norris having started down in seventh, both McLarens were on different race strategies. Norris caught up to Piastri by lap 62 and is told by his team to 'attack' Piastri while he did not have the drag reduction system (DRS). Norris decided to have a go but wisely pulls out.
Lap 63
Norris continued to chase the tail of Piastri but did not have enough speed to complete an overtake, with the Australian crucially picking up DRS after closing the gap to Kimi Antonelli in third.
Lap 66
Piastri began to think about attempting to overtake Antonelli with Norris right behind him. The Englishman went down the inside of the hairpin but Piastri took the place back on the straight.
Lap 67
Norris caught Piastri by surprise by diving in again on the inside and overtakes his teammate, with the pair nearly touching on the exit from the corner.
The fight resumed on to the straight with the pair going wheel to wheel with DRS. Norris went ahead momentarily but Piastri bit back to hold on to the lead as they headed into the final corner.
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Norris was right behind Piastri as they approached the end of the pit wall and decided to break the tow by diving down the side of his team-mate, but the gap was not there, and he went into the rear of the other McLaren.
Norris then skidded on to the grass and into the wall as he lost his front wing.
Norris's race engineer checked in to see if he was OK to which he responded: 'Yep, I'm sorry. It's all my bad, all my fault. Unlucky, sorry. Stupid from me.'