Lando Norris has admitted he will face “repercussions” until “the end of the season” following his opening lap contact with McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri last time out at the Singapore Grand Prix.
After finishing fifth on the grid – two places behind Piastri – Norris went on the attack early in the race, touching the back of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in Turn 3 before bumping wheels with Piastri and coming out in front.
Piastri expressed his displeasure with the incident, having commented “it wasn’t very team spirit” on the radio before asking: “So, are we OK with Lando sidelining me?”
While much of the team’s post-race focus was on their team championship victory, Norris spoke during Thursday’s media day at the United States Grand Prix about the impact of the incident moving forward.
“Things are being reviewed, and there are and will be repercussions for me until the end of the season,” explained the Briton. “It’s not like I achieved anything, but it was also an incident that was, let’s say, small and there was potential to try to avoid it.
“It’s something I never want… I said it after the race, I can’t afford to make contact and have something happen like what happened, because I’m putting as much risk on my whole championship if something goes wrong as on whoever I might race against.
“Of course it takes a toll on myself, but otherwise the commitment and the way we race is the same as it always has been.”
Although Norris did not specify the nature of the repercussions, Piastri said his teammate “took responsibility” for the incident during the discussions that followed.
“I think the discussions from Singapore have been very productive with everyone involved,” the Australian said. “I think the bottom line is that what’s happening in Singapore is not the way we want to race as a team, and ultimately Lando took responsibility for that.
“It’s in the past now, and the rules won’t change because of it. Ultimately, we have this framework in place for a reason and there’s no reason for it to change now. That’s been fixed and we’re now looking to the future.”
As for why they didn’t want to share more details about the repercussions, Piastri added: “Ultimately we’ll also have to race against nine other teams, 18 more, and we don’t want to reveal anything that’s sensitive to our team. I think it’s more than fair to keep that to ourselves, because we don’t want to give the other teams an advantage on what that might be.”
And reflecting on how the situation could develop in the future, the 24-year-old said: “I think we’re going to try to race as best we can within what we think is acceptable as a team.
“That’s really all we can try to do, but I think during the race I wasn’t very happy with what happened. The team decided it wasn’t an acceptable first lap and we fixed it.”
Piastri continues to lead the drivers’ championship by 22 points over Norris, while Verstappen is 63 points off the top in third.
