McLaren confirms cause of Norris' retirement in Canada

With third and fourth on the starting grid, it could have been a fine afternoon at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. However, the gamble to start the race on intermediates backfired, and it quickly turned into a lost race.

After an early pit stop to switch to slicks, Norris was told that McLaren wanted to run long on the new mediums. On lap seventeen, the Brit came in again because the radiators needed to be cleaned. Grass had gotten in and was causing overheating.

Norris' race ended on Lap 40. From eighth place, he had to park his MCL40 at the side of the track in the Montreal hairpin. This was due to a gearbox problem, McLaren confirmed to, among others, GPblog. “Today was not Lando's day. He would have not finished the race. So if there's a day to have all the problems in a single instance, then that was the day,” said team principal Andrea Stella.

Piastri also left the Canadian GP without points. The Australian finished eleventh after what was, for him too, an incident-filled race. Piastri also started on the ultimately wrong tyre and had to switch to slicks early on. Later, he also collided with Alex Albon, for which incident he received a ten-second time penalty.

Stella thinks the penalty was justified. “It was a misjudgment. Obviously there must have been some pressure as well to try and recover, but ultimately this was penalized by the stewards and it was also penalized by the fact that the car was damaged,” said the team boss.

Albon retired after the collision. Oscar Piastri also sustained damage but was able to continue. “I'm not sure that was possible to catch up after the issues we had at the start. The car was damaged, so Oscar lost some performance because of aerodynamic reasons,” Stella concluded.