Here’s how McLaren should respond to Lando Norris’ crash with Oscar Piastri

It was bound to eventually happen and it did. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri came to blows during the Canadian Grand Prix as the McLaren pair contend for the 2025 Formula 1 title. 

Only this time, the fallout came without the drama of previous team-mate clashes – think, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in Barcelona; Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in, well, lots of places really. 

Norris knew he was at fault and immediately apologised for it. The incident happened with four laps remaining, as the Briton chased Piastri down the start-finish straight and moved to the left to attempt an overtake.

However, Norris went for a rapidly closing gap and within a matter of milliseconds, he tagged the rear of Piastri’s car before hitting the pitwall and retiring on the spot. Piastri was unscathed and eventually held onto fourth as the race finished under a safety car, allowing him to extend his title advantage.

He was relatively calm about it though, applauding Norris for apologising while team boss Andrea Stella offered support to the 25-year-old but added “we will have conversations and the conversations may be even tough”. 

So where does McLaren go from here? Its stance on having no outright ‘number one driver’ and lack of team orders between the pair inevitably led to this collision; does McLaren therefore need to have a rethink and establish clear boundaries between its drivers? Plus, how do Piastri and Norris move on from the clash heading into the Austrian Grand Prix?

Our writers have their say. 

Business as usual as Norris won’t dare try it again – Jake Boxall-Legge  

That Norris pretty much immediately accepted the blame for his clash with Piastri was almost as inevitable as the skirmish itself. 

We’ve all done it – someone’s walking through the supermarket slowly, you try to mount the pass as they start listing lazily to the left, but you’ve already committed. Next thing you know, you’re awkwardly brushing against the crisp aisle in the smallest of gaps to squeeze past, unleashing a hailstorm of Doritos bags onto the floor. 

But I digress. McLaren accepted that there was always going to be internecine conflict between its two drivers, and it duly occurred when Norris tried to thread his car into a gap that Piastri was always going to close. Norris flew too close to the sun, got burned, and seemed to accept that. He’s not going to be doing that again any time soon.

So McLaren doesn’t need to change its approach. It probably doesn’t even need to speak to Norris about it; sitting on the start-finish line with terminal damage is enough of a punishment for his actions. It might need to address the idea that, if he’s going to launch ambitious moves like that, he should probably avoid doing it while Piastri’s there. 

Only if it happens again will the statutes of ‘Papaya Rules’ need a few more amendments.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t – Mark Mann-Bryans

‘Papaya Rules’ was introduced last year to aid Norris in his title fight against Max Verstappen. They were never fully made public but, given their seeming complexity, they must have had footnotes and appendices abound.

While, broadly, the rules allowed Norris and Piastri to fight one another in most instances, when the ‘Papaya Rules’ was instigated it meant that the pair played fair. That also meant a lack of racing and entertainment and peril for the viewer.

“Let them race” has been the call from sofas in front of TV sets across the world for years – and McLaren, more often than not, allowed its drivers to do just that.

For that, McLaren should be applauded but also in doing so, incidents such as Norris’ ill-fated overtaking attempt in Montreal should be expected. It is a risk McLaren – to this point – has been willing to take. Fair play, but if you make your bed, you have to be prepared to lie in it.

McLaren doesn’t need to act, but Norris does – Filip Cleeren

It was a question of when, not if, McLaren’s two drivers would come together as they dispute the F1 world championship amongst themselves. But rather than being a watershed event that will trigger some sort of conflict, both drivers were fighting cleanly, fair and square until the moment Norris made a critical misjudgement.

It would be one thing if the two drivers were being too aggressive on each other and needed to be reined in by the team, by reminding them of the famous ‘Papaya Rules’. But this feels more like a silly mistake by Norris, who misjudged his closing speed as well as a non-existent gap on the left.

Of course, running into your team-mate is a cardinal sin, and McLaren is very fortunate that Piastri escaped without damage. But it’s not like McLaren now needs to give Norris a stern talking to, as he is already fully aware he messed up himself and immediately shouldered the blame and apologised to Piastri and the squad. It would be a shame if McLaren was to further tighten up its rules of engagement after Montreal’s events, and I honestly don’t believe it will do so.

What does need to change, as this weekend highlighted, is that Norris needs to stop making so many mistakes. He was every bit as quick as Piastri this weekend, and even faster in race trim, but errors in qualifying left him seventh in Q3, and then his sloppy crash into the championship leader undid the great work he had been doing all afternoon.

Piastri isn’t making nearly as many mistakes, and it is looking more and more like that will be the deciding factor in this year’s title battle.

Good on Norris for apologising but it shows his mental weakness – Ben Hunt

It’s good Norris apologised – but I only wish he hadn’t.

Yes, it was his mistake for squeezing up the inside of Piastri and coming off worst by thudding his car into the wall on lap 67.

And for that he deserved to apologise – but it was the manner with which he was so forthcoming with his words that is a concern and marks Norris as different, say, to Verstappen and perhaps George Russell, or even Piastri himself.

A few weeks ago, Verstappen was at fault for bashing into Russell during the Spanish Grand Prix and he chose his words carefully, saying that it “was not right and shouldn’t have happened”.

Despite being penalised by the stewards, he stopped short of saying sorry – it took Red Bull boss Christian Horner to announce that he had apologised to the team privately for his error.

I wrote a piece back then looking at why sorry seems the hardest word for F1 drivers. I argued that it was part of Verstappen’s ruthlessness and was part of his DNA, which could account for his winning mentality.

Another factor may be that by apologising, it could be interpreted as a weakness by rivals. And that’s why I wish Norris had not done so in Canada.

His willingness to accept the blame will only serve to reinforce the notion that Norris lacks the mental fortitude to battle with Verstappen, Piastri and Russell.