McLaren boss Andrea Stella has said the fact that Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were not fighting for victory at the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix when the pair clashed was a “minor mitigation”.
Norris and Piastri came together on Lap 66 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the Briton attempting to pass his team-mate around the outside on the start-finish straight.
A broken front wing sent Norris into the pit wall, causing irreparable damage to his car, retiring immediately, whilst Piastri’s car was undamaged and was able to secure fourth place.
Norris publicly apologised to Piastri and the team, with Stella saying that his driver’s full and frank ownership of responsibility would make the team “stronger”.
It could be suggested that the fact that Norris and Piastri were battling for fourth place takes the edge off the embarrassment and controversy to some extent, but Stella did not agree.
“Look, the fact that the points today or what we were fighting for was not a victory, even if you never know in a race until the chequered flag, I think this is just a very, very minor mitigation, let me say,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“We act based on principles and based on principles, there should be no contact between the two McLarens. So from this point of view, if anything, Lando pays the price from a championship point of view and let me say luckily there was no double penalty with the points lost for the other car, which had no responsibility in this contact.
“I think in terms of the moving forward and the possible repeat or not when we go racing, and there’s many races, like nowadays we go to 24 races and Sprints, so more and more situations where we can have these kind of episodes.”
‘McLarens racing close, it will happen again’
Stella reiterated his belief that open dialogue regarding the incident helps the team to strengthen, despite admitting that the likelihood of the pair clashing again is high, due to the nature of their World Championship battle.
“Like I said before, I think having experienced rather than having talked, even if the conversations we had about that, they were certainly strong, impactful and absorbed, but having experienced this kind of situation, I think it will make us just more robust as a team and in terms of each of our two drivers against these situations, because the two McLarens racing close to one another, it will happen again,” he said.
“But there will have to be better judgment in terms of the distance, because today in effect it’s just a matter of distance between the two cars.
“There’s nothing like one driver wanting to demonstrate something else.
“If anything, the dangerous situation was more approaching the last chicane when they were side by side, and I saw some wisdom there. But somehow after that, and we know that with the DRS there could be some misjudgments that we have seen in the past as well.”
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