‘I think it’s inevitable:’ The long-predicted coming together between teammates finally happens as Norris and Piastri collide in Canada

Photo Credit: PlanetF1

"I'm sorry. All my bad. All my fault. Stupid from me."

Those were the words echoed by Lando Norris over the McLaren drivers’ team radio after he crashed into the back of teammate Oscar Piastri during the final laps of Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix. This marked the first collision between the two McLaren teammates since they joined forces at the start of the 2023 Formula 1 season.

With Norris running in fifth place and his teammate right ahead of him, the British driver attempted to pass Piastri at the start of Lap 67. Norris caught Piastri napping, briefly passing him at Turn 10. The two drivers raced wheel-to-wheel down the final straight, both using their drag reduction systems off the back of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, who was less than a second ahead. It was Piastri who got back ahead of Norris at Turn 13, but the fighting on track between the two McLaren drivers didn’t stop there.

As Piastri bundled down the start-finish straight, Norris thought he saw a gap to pass Piastri, but that gap didn’t exist. Norris tried to go up the inside of Piastri, squeezing between his teammate’s car and the pit wall. With his two left tires on the grass, Norris clipped the back of Piastri’s car, sending his front wing flying off and ending his race with just four laps to go.

“I should never have gone for it,” said Lando Norris after the race. “It’s my complete hindsight thing. I thought he was starting to drift a little bit to the right, so there was an opportunity to go to the left.

“Way too much risk, especially on my teammate. Happy nothing happened to him, and I paid the price for my mistake.”

McLaren lucked out that the crash occurred with less than five laps to go, and there wasn’t much damage to the back of Piastri’s car. The Australian was able to pit under the safety car, not losing a position to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in fifth place.

Piastri gained 12 points on his teammate during the Canadian Grand Prix. The current World Drivers’ Championship leader finished fourth and is now 22 points ahead of Norris, who sits in second, 21 points ahead of four-time World Drivers’ Champion Max Verstappen.

Norris apologized to Piastri as the latter was meeting with the media.

“Lando has apologized to me, so I guess that says a little bit,” said Oscar Piastri in his post-race media session. “Lando is a very good guy. I think it is in his character and his personality to say exactly what he thinks. It’s good for the whole team going forward that we can have these conversations and go racing like this and have things not go the way we want and get through them.”

A collision between the McLaren teammates has been brewing for a while, something prominent figures of the team have publicly said.

Norris and Piastri have been the two best drivers on the F1 grid since the second half of last season. They’ve kept that momentum going into this year, with the team winning seven of the first ten races in 2025. Piastri, the World Championship leader, has five wins, and Norris, the World Championship favorite going into the season, has two wins.

With both drivers at the top of their game and no clear No. 1 driver on the team, McLaren CEO Zak Brown admitted a crash was bound to happen sooner rather than later.

“It’s definitely a matter of when, rather than if,” said McLaren CEO Zak Brown in late April. “You have two racing drivers, whether in the same team or different team, that are next to each other for 24 races, someone's going to lock a brake. I think it will be a racing incident when that day comes. I think it's inevitable.

“They're two great characters. Neither of them are hotheads, so we're not worried about it, and to a certain extent, kind of looking forward to just getting it out of the way."

More recently, Norris shared the same sentiments, knowing that a crash between him and Piastri was “inevitable.” Turns out, both Brown and Norris were right. Norris knew that a collision on the track was destined to happen soon, and Brown knew that it wouldn’t boil over between his two drivers.

Straight away, Norris took all the blame for the incident, handling himself with aplomb as he faced a barrage of questions from the media.

“When I let the team down like this, and when I make a fool of myself in a moment like today, yeah, I have a lot of regret in something like that,” Norris said. “I’m not proud of that, and I feel bad, and I feel like I let down my team. And that’s always the worst feeling. Of course, I only really need to apologize to all of them and Oscar as well.”

Norris’ attitude was a breath of fresh air in a sport where drivers usually blame other drivers or external factors for on-track incidents. That was evident when Verstappen intentionally crashed into Mercedes’ George Russell at the end of the Spanish Grand Prix. Instead of taking responsibility like Norris, the Dutch driver decided to remain silent. He later admitted his wrongdoing in a social media post, but his attitude following the situation and leading up to Sunday’s race was not commendable.

The McLaren team took note of Norris’ contrition.

“We did appreciate the fact that Lando immediately owned the situation,” said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella. “He raised his hand, he took responsibility for the accident, and he apologized immediately to the team, he came to apologize to me as a team principal in order to apologize to the entire team.”

Stella reassured reporters that this incident wouldn’t change anything on track, the drivers would be free to race against each other, with no designated No. 1 driver.

How will the team respond? We will see in two weeks’ time when Norris and Piastri will be back on track together for the Austrian Grand Prix.