17/10/2025 09:15
Lando Norris has identified McLaren's "number one priority" as
preserving the team morale after admitting accountability for the
Oscar Piastri collision in Singapore. Ahead of the United States
GP, Norris explained that it was "fair" for McLaren to have
apportioned blame to him for the incident at Turn 2 in which he
collided with Piastri to muscle his way past and into third place.
The contact was actually caused by Norris being tipped wide after
clipping the rear of Max Verstappen's car and into Piastri, who was
irate over the radio at his team-mate passing him in such a manner,
and felt the contact breached the so-called Papaya Rules in place.
Explaining further after admitting accountability, Norris explained
how team principal Andrea Stella's main target was to preserve
McLaren's working environment, that has transformed it from
also-rans to world champions in less than two years. "Whatever it
is, I think sometimes repercussions are not positive," Norris
explained to media, including RacingNews365. "It is clear that the
interest for Andrea [Stella] is preserving the position on teamwork
that we have, and that teamwork has allowed us to go from being
last on the grid a few years ago to being the best performing team
and having two drivers who challenge each other more than any team
on the grid. "When you're fighting for wins between those two
drivers, of course, you are going to have trickier moments, but the
reason we've been able to deal with things well on both sides is
because of Andrea's leadership. "I don't know what happened to
teams in the past, and what Lewis [Hamilton] and [Nico] Rosberg
had, but Andrea's number one priority is preserving the morale and
the framework that we set out. "I have been a part of it for many
years, but especially since Andrea stepped into his position of
being team principal and how he wants to preserve the greatness in
the team that we have at the minute."
