Norris' humility in Canada is a sign of McLaren's biggest strength

After Max Verstappen’s loss of control in the Spanish Grand Prix, I wrote about how I felt Red Bull and Verstappen did not front up when they should have. The same cannot be said for Lando Norris on Sunday in Montreal.

There have been plenty of occasions where Norris is too hard on himself and almost looks like he is looking for reasons to shoulder blame when he actually should cut himself more slack. But the Canadian Grand Prix was not such a day, and he deserves praise for the way he handled himself.

Not praise for the original incident, which was clearly Norris’ fault as he looked for a gap that wasn’t there on the run towards Turn 1 and ran clear into the back of Oscar Piastri – with his teammate not moving erratically in defense – but for how quickly he had clarity of what happened.

“I’m sorry,” he said on team radio. “It’s all my bad, all my fault. Unlucky, sorry. Stupid from me.”

The adrenaline must have been flowing after making contact at high speed with another car and then instantly hitting the wall to fully end his race, but Norris bucked a trend. It’s understandable that drivers often ask what happened or even criticize the driver they were fighting with, because something hasn’t gone to plan and it takes a while to process why.

Norris, though, had full awareness of the situation and was quick to apologize. It might be simply because he’s wired to take responsibility himself first before looking to blame others, but we’ve heard him point the finger at Verstappen before when they’ve had incidents, so it’s not beyond him to provide the usual reaction.

It spoke volumes that Norris took it upon himself, and it also completely defused the situation immediately, even when Piastri hadn’t had a chance to look back at how it had played out.

“I honestly haven’t seen what happened. I felt a bit of a touch. It’s an unusual place to have an incident. I still need to have a look,” Piastri said. “Lando has apologized to me, so I guess that says a little bit…

"Lando is a very good guy. I think it is in his character and his personality to say exactly what he thinks and … if that is detrimental to himself or about himself, it doesn’t matter to him, and I think that is a great quality of Lando.

“It’s good for the whole team going forwards that we can have these conversations and go racing like this and have things not go the way we want and get through them.

“Everything will stay the same. Had it been a crash in a corner and clearly we got it wrong and [were] too aggressive, that’s one thing, but it was a bit of an unfortunate incident on a straight, effectively. For me, I don’t think it will change anything and that is the way it should be, because ultimately we are trying to fight for a world championship.”

The whole of McLaren's reaction to Norris' mistake speaks to a top-down culture. James Sutton/Getty Images

It’s not just Norris who should be praised in terms of his reaction, either, but McLaren as a whole. Both team principal Andrea Stella and CEO Zak Brown have said they want to see the drivers fighting on track, and knew a collision was going to happen at some stage.

Both leaders regularly reiterated what would matter most would be the reaction to such an incident, and in Canada they got their first look at how Norris can handle himself when he’s cost the team.

“We said a few times that it wasn’t a matter of if, it was more a matter of when,” Stella said. “The when is Canada 2025. We never want to see two McLarens having contact, this is part of our principles. We saw it today.

“This is just the result of a miscalculation, a misjudgment from a racing point of view – which obviously should not happen, but at the same time is part of racing – and we did appreciate that Lando immediately owned the situation, raised his hand and took responsibility for the accident, and he apologized to the team, [not only] me as team principal [but] apologized to the entire team.

“It is important the way we respond and react to these situations, which ultimately will be a very important learning point. It is learning in terms of experiencing how painful the situations can be, and this will only make us stronger in terms of our internal competition and the way we go racing.”

A collision between two teammates fighting for a championship – especially one where it takes a car out of the race – is often an extremely explosive moment, one that dominates headlines and requires careful and sometimes delicate navigation from the team. Instead, Norris’ self-awareness proved to be a real strength – one that also shows why maybe McLaren can trust the two drivers to fight for a title and not risk upsetting the wider atmosphere and momentum that the team has built up.

What could have been a turning point for McLaren was quickly controlled based on the way the team had prepared for such a scenario, but more importantly due to a driver who could immediately acknowledge when he was wrong. That may prove to be a weakness for Norris on some occasions, but not today.