Rosberg warns of mental spiral after Norris’ Canadian GP crash: “Can get pretty dark”

2016 Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg has spoken about Lando Norris’ Canadian Grand Prix race-ending incident and the mental toll this could have on the McLaren driver.

In the latter stages of the race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Norris were battling it out for fourth place. While it remained clean for several laps, it ultimately resulted in Norris crashing into the wall as he went for a gap that wasn’t there, ending his race.

“First of all, we’re thankful to McLaren to let them race because it brings us a lot of excitement,” Rosberg explained on Sky Sports F1. “It was an amazing battle to watch. The two of them go head to head, and Lando did an amazing first lunge into the hairpin. That was beautiful.”

“And then afterwards, yeah, I mean it’s just very strange how the mistake that Lando made, super strange, and it’s just one more mistake of the many. It’s a big mistake because he’s going somewhere and even really committed [to] going somewhere – like he doesn’t back off or anything, he just stays full throttle, which is also a bit strange. Full commitment. There’s no gap there, so it’s a bit awkward.

“Anyway, this is not too difficult to sort out because Piastri for one is completely aside, he’s not done anything, and Lando, Andrea just needs to have a talk to him and just to understand. You don’t even need to blame because it’s a misjudgement, but you need to go through it and understand.”

When questioning how Norris will now deal with the repercussions of the crash, Rosberg spoke from experience, claiming that it is easy to start “spiralling negatively down.”

“The thing is that it also becomes a little bit traumatic at some point because you start spiralling negatively down and down and you get this repetition of, ‘I’m making mistakes, I’m not good enough, I’m making mistakes,’ and it starts to get to you in your head.

“And it can get pretty dark then. And I’ve been through this, so it gets really dark, and especially when you make a mistake like today where everybody can see it – you even hit your team-mate – so your whole team is thinking ‘what’s going on?’

“It’s difficult for Lando to get back out of that,” Rosberg concluded.