McLaren team principal says Lando Norris’ confidence might be impacted after Oscar Piastri crash at Canadian GP | F1 News

McLaren’s team director Andrea Stella says Lando Norris’s confidence could be “hit” after his accident with Oscar Piastri at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Norris admitted that he was at fault for the “stupid” move while he was trying to overtake Piastri, who was 22 points ahead of his teammate McLaren in the championship.

The incident saw Norris’ first retirement in almost 12 months, with his last failure to see the checkered flag arriving at the Austrian Grand Prix 2024 when he collided with Max Verstappen.

“Obviously, it was an episode that cost him championship points,” said Stella.

“It is an episode that for his own admission, he said:” The principle was clear, I just made a bad judgment “. He never came to say:” Let’s talk about it “.

“It can have an impact in terms of confidence, but it is up to us as a team to show our total support in Lando.

“And on this one, I want to be completely clear, it is full support in Lando. We will have conversations and conversations can even be difficult.

“But there is no doubt about the support we provide in Lando and the fact that we will preserve our parity and our equality in terms of running in McLaren between our two pilots.”

Norris immediately apologized to the whole team after the race that Stella “appreciated”.

“The situation would be different if Lando would not have taken responsibility and apologized,” he continued.

“Lando himself will have to show his character to overcome this kind of episodes, make sure he only takes learning.

“He takes only what will make him a stronger driver and rejects everything that will be a bit of … residual, a little influence for the future which is perhaps not just a good learning and a stronger driver.”

Has the qualified frustration of Norris led to the incident?

Since the first part of the 2025 F1 season, the bosses of McLaren Zak Brown and Stella have openly recognized that a collision between their drivers would take place and prepare for such a scenario.

Stella claims that Sunday’s incident will only “be stronger in terms of internal competition”.

“We said a few times that it was not a question of whether, it was more a question of knowing when. And when is Canada 2025,” he said.

“We never want to see two McLarens have contact. This is part of our principles. This is only the result of a calculation error, an error of judgment from a racing point of view, which should obviously not happen, but at the same time is part of the race.”

Norris still was working in the race after qualifying the seventh, four places behind his teammate Piastri.

He started on the hard tires but had a cooler rubber and more rhythm in the last pass when he hunted the Australian before the collision.

Stella thinks that any disappointment that Norris had on qualifications did not influence her “painful” contact with Piastri.

“From the point of view of Lando in particular, I am not sure that there is a reason to do with the fact that he could have had a little difficulty in qualifying to capitalize on his speed that he had demonstrated throughout the weekend,” he said.

“There was surely a little frustration so as not to have qualified as high as he would have liked it, but for the moment I would not say that this is the reason why there has been an error in judgment today.

“I think it is too long at once in terms of correlation of these two events, but there will certainly be good conversations, but they will occur once we are all rested and calm and we have the opportunity to take all learning and unload which has not to come with us in the future.”

The next step for the Formula 1 2025 season is a return to Europe for the Austrian Grand Prix, which is live on Sky Sports F1 from June 27 to 29. Stream Sky Sports with now – no contract, cancel at any time.