This Norris blunder unravelled into woeful race for McLaren says Stella

08:00, 17 Jun

Updated: 08:49, 17 Jun

byNorberto Mujica

Lando Norris hit the back of Oscar Piastri's car. A matter of when, says McLaren team principal Andrea Stella reflecting on the incident. A painful clash, that the Italian sees his British driver having to learn from.

After the race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Stella faced the media following the contact between both McLaren drivers, something that was foreseen, but that should nevertheless, not have happened.

"We said it a few times. It was not a matter of if, it was more a matter of when. The when is Canada 2025. We never want to see two McLarens having contact. This is part of our principles. We saw it today. This is just a result of a miscalculation, a misjudgment from a racing point of view, which obviously should not happen, but at the same time is part of racing."

Norris apologised to the whole of McLaren

As soon as his race had ended following the crash, Norris took to the radio to apologise for the incident. “We did appreciate the fact that Lando immediately owned the situation. He raised his hand. He took responsibility for the accident and he apologised immediately to the team, he came to apologise to me as team principal in order to apologise to the entire team.”

“It's important the way we respond and we react to these situations which ultimately will be a very important learning point. I don't think it's a learning from a theoretical point of view because the principle was already there but it's a learning in terms of experiencing how painful these situations can be. And this will only make us stronger in terms of our internal competition and in terms of the way we go racing,” Stella stated.

Andrea Stella, team principal of McLaren

McLaren foregoes artificial racing despite the risks

The way McLaren go about their racing will not change, even though both drivers are expected to continue racing close to each other. “The being free to race and the being clear as to how we go racing is a value of racing. It is a value of racing that we want to try and exercise and respect as much as we can, rather than every time that we have a proximity between the two cars, then having control from the pitwall.”

“I think like that, racing may soon become a bit of an artefact and we want to give Lando and Oscar opportunities to race and opportunities to be at the end of the season in the position that they deserve to be in based on their merit, based on their performance, based on the racing quality that they have expressed through the season, rather than being at the end of the season and realize that the points have been controlled more by the team rather than the quality of their driving.”

“This is not necessarily a simple and straight exercise but we want to try and do it as best as we can so I don't foresee that today's episode will change our approach from this point of view. If anything, it will reinforce and it will strengthen that the principle we have requires more caution by our drivers.”

Ultimately, for the Italian, Norris misjudged the situation, and that resulted in the crash. “Because if we say that there should be no contact between the two McLarens, we need to have the margins to make sure that we have no contact, even if in a DRS situation, the car may get almost a little bit sucked onto the other car and cause this kind of misjudgment as to the distance,” said Stella.