Lando Norris held McLaren responsible for the collision with Oscar Piastri in Singapore, but did not elaborate on the impact on this weekend’s American Grand Prix.
The incident occurred as Norris attempted to overtake Piastri on the inside of Turn 3 on the opening lap, but light contact with the rear of Verstappen’s car caused a snap, which led to further contact with Piastri. At the time, the Australian voiced his displeasure over the team radio and Norris defended the move after the race, but the latter now claims McLaren put the blame on him.
“The team held me accountable for what happened, which I think is fair. And we moved forward from there to understanding what the impact was on ourselves to make sure that nothing worse than what happened happened,” Norris said.
“But nothing changes in the way we race. It’s just that we and the team want to avoid something like that happening again, simply because two McLaren cars collided.”
“Zach (Brown) and Andrea (Stella) don’t want that to happen, and as teammates, I don’t want that to happen. So, of course, that’s why I was held accountable. It has consequences.”
In Singapore, Norris finished ahead of Piastri despite calls from the championship leader to address the incident, but Piastri insisted he was satisfied with the way the situation was handled in the aftermath.
“As you can imagine, we had a lot of discussions,” Piastri said. “They were very productive. I think we’re very clear about how we want to race as a team, and that includes going forward. The accident that happened in Singapore is not the way we want to race. So Lando takes responsibility for that and so does the team.”
“So I think as a team, it’s clear that the way the first lap unfolded wasn’t the race we were hoping for.
“I’m very happy (that there was no favoritism). Personally, after analyzing this incident, I believe that ultimately Rand was responsible for that collision. But I am very happy that there was no favoritism or prejudice.”
Despite McLaren regularly having to deal with situations between two drivers, Piastri also doesn’t feel the team is complicating the championship fight too much.
“The only thing I can say is that all the reasons for certain decisions are not always immediately obvious, both in the car and in the race, but I think it’s always very clear after the fact why certain decisions were made and why things were done in a certain way,” he said.
“For me, I don’t think it’s overly complicated. No, I think there was a good reason for everything.
“I don’t expect it to be fixed on track every time or every time, but at the end of the day we know how the race is expected to be and if we don’t, there will be consequences.
“So I’m not going to change anything about how I race. I think that’s clear to me. I don’t think what happened was intentional, I think it was just a little bit of a lapse in judgment, but ultimately I’m not going to change the way I race because of that.”