Tough talks ahead but McLaren want drivers to race each other

Reuters

5 hours ago

MONTREAL, June 16 (Reuters) - McLaren will continue to let Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris race freely for the Formula One title but there will be some tough talks back at the factory after Sunday's collision in Canada.
Norris accepted the blame after hitting the rear of his championship-leading Australian teammate's car while trying to overtake in a battle for fourth place three laps from the finish.
The incident between the title frontrunners, with Piastri extending his lead to 22 points while Norris failed to score, was the talk of the paddock at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and had been long predicted.
McLaren principal Andrea Stella said the team would discuss once the dust had settled how to prevent it from happening again.
"Definitely there will be good conversations, but they will happen once we are all rested and calm," the Italian told reporters.
He said the team would seek to "preserve our parity and equality in terms of how we go racing at McLaren between our two drivers.
"The being free to race and the being clear as to how we go racing is a value of racing," he added.
"It is a value of racing that we want to try and exercise and respect as much as we can, rather than every time we have a proximity between the two cars then having control from the pit wall.
"We want to give Lando and Oscar opportunities to race and opportunities to be at the end of the season in the position that they deserve to be in."
Stella said the points should reflect the drivers' performance rather than any team orders.
"This is not necessarily a simple and straight exercise but we want to try and do it as best as we can," he said. "So I don't foresee that today's episode will change our approach from this point of view.
"If anything it will reinforce and it will strengthen that the principles we have require more caution by our drivers."
Stella said the incident was a simple misjudgement of distance rather than an aggressive statement of intent and he appreciated Norris' ownership of responsibility.
He recognised the Briton's confidence could be dented, with the driver always open in his emotions and prone to blaming himself in a title battle increasingly going Piastri's way, but Norris could count on every support.
"On this one I want to be completely clear," said Stella. "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.
"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."
Piastri has won five of the 10 races so far to Norris' two with 14 remaining.
The next race is in Austria on June 29.