Lando Norris has picked up a five-second time penalty for his crash with team-mate Oscar Piastri at the Canadian Grand Prix, avoiding a grid penalty that would have added salt to the wounds ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix later this month. Norris was challenging his McLaren colleague for fourth place at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, but went for a non-existent gap on the run to Turn Three.

As the track swung right, he was left with no room and collided with the rear of Piastri’s car, sending him into the barrier and out of the race. Despite not taking the chequered flag, Norris was classified in P18 as he had completed over 90 per cent of the race. This means that, following a review from the stewards, he was hit with a five-second time penalty for the incident, rather than a grid penalty that would have carried over into the next race.

Sunday’s race was nothing short of a disaster for Norris, whose title hopes took a significant hit. The Brit is now 22 points behind his team-mate and, making matters worse, is now only 21 ahead of Max Verstappen, who came home in second place behind race winner George Russell.

While questions have been raised about Norris’ title prospects after Sunday’s crash, there can be no question about the 25-year-old’s maturity and integrity. The Brit took immediate responsibility for the contact, and went straight to apologise to Piastri after the session.

“I thought Oscar would move a bit more to the right, not to leave a gap obviously – I don’t expect something to be easy from him, but I just misjudged it,” he said. “It was all my mistake, I take full blame, so I apologise to my whole team and to Oscar for attempting something like that.”

Even Piastri was impressed by his team-mate’s reaction, which, fortunately, didn’t cause him any significant damage. “I felt a bit of a touch, and obviously it was an unusual place to have an incident,” the Australian said. “Lando apologising says I guess says a little bit, and he is a very good guy.

“I think it is in his character, in his personality, to say exactly what he thinks, and if that’s detrimental to himself, if it is about himself, then it doesn’t matter for him. I think that is a great quality, it is good for the whole team going forward, so 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. If it had been a crash in a corner, clearly we got it wrong and were too aggressive, then that is one thing, but it was a bit of an unfortunate incident on a straight. So for me, I don’t think it will change anything, and I think that is the way it should be because ultimately, we’re both trying to fight for a world championship.”