PALMER: The Canada crash with Piastri was a major misjudgment – but there is a silver lining for Norris

So the long anticipated clash of the McLarens finally happened: Lando Norris hit the back of Oscar Piastri and retired from the Canadian Grand Prix. It was clearly Lando’s error and the Briton immediately admitted that he was to blame, but let’s take a look at how it all came about.

Norris was generally faster than Piastri in Canada. While the McLaren car didn’t look as overwhelmingly competitive in Montreal as it has at most other venues this year, Lando was still able to find competitive lap times in practice, before running well in the first two parts of Qualifying.

Meanwhile Oscar was looking slightly scrappier and was struggling to get time out of the car.

But it all changed when the pressure was added to the mix. Searching for a pole lap, Norris’ first flying lap saw him cut the chicane at the final corner, and his second new tyre effort saw him understeer off towards the barrier on the exit of Turn 7 and lose any chance of a respectable starting position.

His best effort ended up being a banker lap he did on a second run on his first set of tyres.

It looks to me like Lando is struggling more with the pressure of the big moments. The McLaren front suspension upgrade for him in Canada was an attempt to give him more feel in the car, yet he’s still making errors that I haven’t really seen from him in Qualifying until this year.

In the race it looked like it was another misjudgement, under a self-imposed pressure.

Again Norris was the stronger of the two McLarens on Sunday, charging through from seventh on the grid to get within striking distance of his team mate, who was having one of his more lacklustre races having started third.

It was a battle for fourth position. There wasn’t even a spot on the podium available for the winner of this particular fight – and only a minor points gain – so really there was little need for a big risk. It still felt important to see if Norris could overcome Piastri though. Had he got by it would have given him a four point swing out of his team mate – and more importantly, given him a big confidence boost.

But overtaking looked pretty difficult for those without a big tyre advantage, and so when Lando managed to force the issue with a tidy lunge on the inside of Oscar at Turn 10, he would have known this was it, his one opportunity.

Oscar is a fantastic wheel-to-wheel racer. We’ve seen it routinely now, and he defended well at the final chicane, holding it late on the brakes and keeping position, but compromising his exit.

This was Lando’s final shot. If you can’t make it through at Turn 1 there are no more overtaking opportunities until Turn 10, and he could be certain that Oscar would be more aware of that attempt now that Lando had shown his hand.

It looked to me that it was this feeling of a desperate last chance that led Lando to chase a gap on the inside that was never there and ruin all of the good work of his race. From the outside it looks like one of the more clumsy errors from a title contender, and there’s no denying it is.

From inside the cockpit though these moments play out quickly. You are sitting low down to the ground, with a racing heart rate and adrenaline coursing through your veins. This is the moment you’ve been waiting 66 laps for – a chance to have a crack at your title rival and make the difference on track.

Lando said he thought he saw Oscar move to the right-hand side slightly and expected the Aussie to move more, thus affording him space for the inside at Turn 1.

Obviously in hindsight, he should have stayed to the right, had the shorter run to the braking zone and a possible chance to go around the outside of his team mate, but having just been quelled at the previous turn, it was clear that he was determined to get to the inside come hell or high water.

It was as if he was just willing a space to open, when in reality Piastri is too smart a racer to allow that.

Some people have drawn a comparison to the other Montreal McLaren clash between Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button in 2011. A brief look at both incidents tells the same story, however the way they came together is critically different.

Hamilton had an overlap on Button in 2011 and therefore was entitled to some space next to his team mate. Norris was desperate to force that same move, but the space was never there and Lando was never alongside. He simply drove into the back of Oscar.

In 2011 the move was more contentious and the result quite different. Despite having a puncture, Button went on to win one of Formula 1’s most dramatic races, while Hamilton retired with damage.

In 2025 I think McLaren – and probably even Norris – will be pleased that the incident didn’t take both cars out, even though it has ended up costing Lando 12 more points in the championship. The fact that Oscar actually benefitted from it, and Lando immediately held his hands up, means that the team will probably get away without civil war just yet.

Nonetheless it’s a real signal of intent as to the risks Norris will take in racing his team mate now. It shows that the time for any pretence of teamwork is over and it is most definitely gloves off for the rest of the season. Piastri takes his biggest points advantage yet to the next race and Norris has another week of regret to think about what he might have done differently.

The silver lining for him is that the pace was there. This looked like Norris’ best race drive of 2025 until the contact and he’ll take confidence from that. It’s just in the pressure moments that we are seeing too many errors.

His Abu Dhabi win last year was under Constructors’ Championship pressure though and you don’t get a more intense Qualifying than Monaco, where he took pole, so we know he can do it, he just needs to find some momentum. This was another blot, but the championship is most certainly not over yet.