Lando Norris has revealed that McLaren felt he was at fault for the incident on the opening lap between him and teammate Oscar Piastri at the Singapore Grand Prix.
"The team held me accountable for what happened."- Lando Norris
Norris made contact with Piastri in Turn 3 on the first lap in Singapore, but there was no penalty for either driver.
The British driver told GPblog in Austin: "There were talks [after the race in Singapore]. That was inevitable.
"The team held me accountable for what happened, which I think is fair. Then we made progress from there on understanding what the repercussions were for myself to definitely avoid anything worse happening than what did.
"Like I said, back after Singapore, the last thing I wanted was something like that to happen, to cause these controversial talks after a race. And at the same time, I put just as much risk on me putting myself out of the race as I do whoever I'm racing against, whether it's Oscar or anyone else."
Norris added that he feels avoiding contact and keeping clean out on the circuit has been one of his key traits since joining the F1 grid in 2019.
He said: "So it's clearly something I want to avoid. It's been one of my strengths since coming into Formula 1 is avoiding contact in general and keeping myself in the race and those things.
"I think one thing we've always done good as a team is using and progressing with the framework that we have to allow both of us as drivers to trust each other and the team. And that's a lot of the reason for why we're a stronger team than everyone else."
Reviewing the incident itself, while the Briton explained it's key to avoid contact, but what happened was not a 'crash'.
"I think that the simple answer is there was contact between the two cars, and that's something that we always want to avoid. The rule is to not crash with each other," Norris explained why he was held accountable.
"This wasn't a crash. It was something much smaller. But we still don't even want to get it to that point because it causes these kind of things, and that's never a good thing. So we want to avoid anything like we had in Singapore.
"In the end, the understanding is that it's racing and it's difficult to always be perfect. I didn't want what happened to happen, but I'm never going to let go of an opportunity. There was a gap and I went for it. And what happened, happened.
"But nothing, let's say, changes from how we go racing. It's just we and the team want to avoid those kind of things happening again. And simply for the reason was there was contact between two McLaren cars, and Zak and Andrea doesn't want that to happen. And I think as teammates, we don't want that to happen.
"So, of course, that's the reasoning for why I was hold accountable," he concluded.
Norris went on to take third place at the chequered flag in Singapore, ahead of Piastri, who still leads the world championship by 22 points.
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