McLaren back Norris after 'miscalculated' crash: 'Our full support'

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has offered his "full support" for Lando Norris, who crashed into his teammate Oscar Piastri in the closing stages of the Canadian Grand Prix.

The McLaren duo clashed at the start of lap 67 of 70 around the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, resulting in significant suspension damage on the front of Norris' car and subsequent retirement from the race.

Meanwhile, Piastri escaped unscathed and was able to continue for the remaining few laps, crossing the line in fourth position. An extra 12 points meant that Piastri has extended his lead over Norris in the Drivers' Championship to 22 points.

It was a difficult weekend in general by McLaren's lofty standards, as Piastri and Norris qualified in third and seventh respectively on Saturday. While they had better race pace, they never looked capable of challenging for the victory, which went to the Mercedes of George Russell.

'The conversations may even be tough'

Norris was quick to blame himself for the intra-team collision, telling media that it was "all my fault".

McLaren boss Stella, despite the disappointment of the race result, was happy that Norris accepted responsibility so quickly for the incident.

He said: "It's up to us as a team to show our full support to Lando. We will have conversations and the conversations may be even tough, but there's no doubt over the support we give to Lando.

"The situation would be different if Lando would have not taken responsibility and apologised. This is just a result of a miscalculation, a misjudgement from a racing point of view, which obviously should not happen, but at the same time is part of racing.

"And 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.

"How we react to these situations will ultimately be a very important learning point. In the coming days, we will have to go into what is needed in order to make sure that when we go racing, we preserve the margins that are required," stated Stella.

'Surely there was a bit of frustration'

Stella doesn't believe that a poor Qualifying performance the day before could have contributed to Norris' failed overtake on his closest rival and teammate.

He continued: "I'm not sure that there is any reason to do with the fact that he might have struggled a little bit yesterday in qualifying to capitalise on his speed, a speed that he had demonstrated throughout the weekend.

"Surely, there was a bit of frustration for not having been able to qualify as he would have liked. But at the moment, I wouldn't say that that's the reason why there was a misjudgement today. I think this is too long a shot in terms of correlating these two events."

• Read Also: Norris owns up to costly error: ‘All my fault’ in McLaren collision

Stella hopes that the incident will be a lesson for Norris and the team to move forward, and make sure a similar scenario doesn't take place again in the future.

He concluded: "But definitely there will be good conversations, but they will happen once we are all rested and calm, and we have the possibility to take all the learning and discharge what doesn't have to come with us in the future."

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