Oscar Piastri admitted he wasn’t too upset when Lando Norris crashed out of the Canadian Grand Prix last year, something he later mentioned to McLaren boss Zak Brown.
Norris was 18 points behind at the time, and the two McLaren drivers had been expected to come together eventually as their title fight continued. That moment came in round 10 of 24, when Norris tried a move into Turn 11 and clipped Piastri from behind.
Piastri managed to keep going while Norris hit the barriers and retired. The Australian went on to win that race by over eight seconds, widening his championship lead.
Their clashes didn’t stop there. Later in the season, both drivers crashed out at Turn 1 during the US GP Sprint Race after another bit of contact early on.
Oscar Piastri’s revealing conversation with Zak Brown over Canada collision
Lando Norris took responsibility for the crash in Canada and was handed a five-second penalty by the stewards, though it had no real impact since he was already out of the race. McLaren didn’t take any further action.
Speaking to Brown on Drive to Survive, Piastri admitted he wasn’t too upset about how things turned out. Even though the safety car affected his chase of Kimi Antonelli, he still managed to finish fourth.
“You’re lucky a tyre didn’t go down,” said Brown. “It was black and white.
“I know you won’t admit it, but there’s no way, when you drove around the next lap, you didn’t go: ‘Oh 10 more points for me.’”
Piastri replied: “Once I knew it wasn’t my fault and that he was fine then yes.”
How Christian Horner and Toto Wolff responded to the McLaren crash
In episode three, we also get to see how former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff responded.
Horner believed the incident was bound to happen at some point but still noted that Norris had broken an important team rule.
“That’s been coming for many races,” Horner said. “I’m surprised it’s got to Canada before they made contact. Every team has the golden rule, ‘Don’t hit your teammate’.”
Toto Wolff, who had plenty of experience managing clashes between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg during their time together at Mercedes, felt he could have prevented what happened in Montreal if he’d been in charge at McLaren.
He said: “Tactics, now. There’s the lesson for them to learn that we knew before. We would have stopped that. We would have said ‘no contact’.”
Norris made contact with Piastri during an overtake at the start of the Singapore GP, which led to internal ‘repercussions’. He was relegated to number two status in qualifying.
However, when Piastri was deemed predominantly at fault for the Austin Sprint melee, those repercussions were removed.
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