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Oscar Piastri was privately pleased when Lando Norris crashed out of last year’s Canadian Grand Prix, as he revealed in a conversation with McLaren boss Zak Brown.
The two McLaren drivers had been widely expected to collide at some point as they fought for the title. At round 10 out of 24, Norris tagged the rear of Piastri’s car as he attempted an overtake.
Piastri was able to continue, but Norris found the barriers and had to retire from the race. The Australian was able to extend his lead to 22 points.
Will Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri always be on good terms?
The two McLarens were involved in another incident at the start of the US GP Sprint towards the end of the season, with both drivers unable to continue on that occasion.
Oscar Piastri’s revealing conversation with Zak Brown over Lando Norris Canada collision
Norris accepted responsibility for the Canada crash and received an ultimately meaningless five-second penalty from the stewards. Given that he was already the victim on track, McLaren didn’t see fit to impose any further punishment.
In a conversation that was captured on Drive to Survive 24 hours after the race, Brown acknowledged that Piastri would be quietly pleased with the outcome. While his assault on Kimi Antonelli stalled due to the resulting safety car, he still finished fourth.
After apologising on the radio, Norris climbed out of the car unscathed. Piastri escaped a puncture, which is typical in this kind of incident.
Let us know your 1, 2, 3…
“You’re lucky a tyre didn’t go down,” Brown told Piastri. “It was black and white.
“I know you won’t admit it, but there’s no way, when you drove around the next lap, you didn’t go, ‘Oh, 10 more points for me.’
A smiling Piastri replied: “Once I knew it wasn’t my fault and that he was fine, then yes.”
How Christian Horner and Toto Wolff reacted to McLaren crash
Episode three also features the reaction of former Red Bull team boss Christian Horner and Mercedes chief Toto Wolff.
While Horner felt the crash was inevitable, he said Norris had nonetheless broken the ‘golden rule’.
“That’s been coming for many races,” Horner said. “I’m surprised it’s got to Canada before they made contact. Every team has the golden rule, ‘Don’t hit your teammate’.”
Wolff had previously dealt with numerous collisions between Mercedes title rivals Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, but was confident he could have prevented the Montreal collision if he was on the McLaren pit wall.
- READ MORE: McLaren shut ‘Netflix cameras’ out of their ‘difficult conversations’ with Oscar Piastri last year
He said: “Tactics, now. There’s the lesson for them to learn that we knew before. We would have stopped that. We would have said ‘no contact’.”
Norris made contact with Piastri during an overtake at the start of the Singapore GP, which led to internal ‘repercussions’. He was relegated to number two status in qualifying.
However, when Piastri was deemed predominantly at fault for the Austin Sprint melee, the repercussions were removed.
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