AUSTIN, Texas — Lando Norris has been held accountable by McLaren for his near-collision with Oscar Piastri at the Singapore Grand Prix and will face “consequences” for it going forward, although neither he or the team has elaborated on what they are.
Norris almost put teammate and title rival Piastri, who leads him in the championship by 22 points, into the wall at the start of the race two weeks ago.
The pair made contact after Norris had to take evasive action to avoid Max Verstappen. Norris stayed ahead of Piastri until the end of the race.
Piastri was upset with the move and hinted on the radio that the Englishman should be made to give the position back — something McLaren opted against enforcing during the race, although the team’s opinion on the incident appears to have changed since.
“The team held me accountable for what happened, which I think is fair,” Norris said on Thursday ahead of the U.S. Grand Prix. “We made progress from there on understanding what the repercussions were for myself, to avoid anything worse happening than what did.”
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Curiously, Piastri had worded things slightly differently in his own media session before Norris spoke, saying: “Lando’s taken responsibility for that, and so has the team. So, yeah, I think it’s quite clear for us as a team that how Lap 1 unfolded wasn’t how we want to go racing.”
Speaking in the TV pen, Norris told Sky Sports News: “Things were reviewed and there are and will be repercussions for me until the end of the season.”
Without giving further details away, in his session with the written media he explained why the team might have enforced some kind of punishment.
“The rule is to not crash with each other,” he said. “This wasn’t a crash, it was something much smaller, but we still don’t even want to get it to that point because it causes these kind of things, and that’s never a good thing. We and the team want to avoid those kind of things happening again. Simply for the reason there was contact between two McLaren cars.
“Zak [Brown] and Andrea [Stella] don’t want that to happen, and I think as teammates, we don’t want that to happen. So of course, that’s the reason for why I was held accountable. It has consequences.”
When asked again to clarify whether there were consequences for the move, he replied: “I said yes, there is consequences.”
Piastri was also asked about what they were and he said: “That’s for the team [to know].”
