McLaren have always put their arm around Lando Norris and they will continue to do so after he hurt his world championship hopes by crashing at 200mph into team-mate Oscar Piastri on Sunday.
But they have admitted for the first time that they need ‘tough conversations’ with him, his psyche fractured by his failed lunge at the Canadian Grand Prix. The two McLaren men clashed as they fought for fourth place three laps from the end of the race won immaculately by Mercedes’ George Russell.
The collision ended Norris’s participation and plunged him 22 points back from Piastri, who went on to finish fourth.
It was a massive blow to Norris, whose race craft under pressure is now the hottest topic in Formula One. He accepted full responsibility for the incident.
The cool consideration of Norris’s team principal Andrea Stella has been tested, and talks between all parties are expected to continue over the next few days following the New York screening of the sport’s new movie, F1, on Monday night. Stella said: ‘This may have an impact in terms of his confidence.
‘We will have conversations, and the conversations may even be tough, but there’s no doubt over the support we give to Lando and over the fact that we will preserve our parity and equality in terms of how we go racing at McLaren between our two drivers.
Lando Norris must prepare for tough talks with the McLaren hierarchy after the Canadian GP
The British driver crashed into his team-mate Oscar Piastri and hurt his world championship chances badly
Team principal Andrea Stella has seen his typically cool and composed consideration tested
‘The situation would have been different if Lando did not take responsibility and apologise. Lando will have to show his character to overcome this kind of episode and make sure that he only takes the learnings to become a stronger driver.’
Questions over Norris’s ability to handle pressure in high-speed situations, with the title at stake, have grown increasingly loud, a fear that intensified when he made mistakes in qualifying in Montreal and started seventh. He drove well to get level with Piastri as they went wheel-to-wheel. Norris is clearly smooth and effective when by himself but is prone to poor decision-making in close combat.
Nico Rosberg, the 2016 world champion, knows plenty about fighting at the top of the standings, having been through the ringer in his rivalry with Lewis Hamilton.
The two of them, old karting buddies, vied viciously as team-mates at Mercedes before Rosberg eventually won the title in a one-off feat of mental endurance before quitting the sport, knowing he could never again summon the mental reserves to take on such a talent.
Commentating for Sky, he said: ‘It becomes a little bit traumatic because you start spiralling negatively down and down, and you get this repetition of, “I’m making mistakes, and I’m not good enough”, and it starts to get to you in your head.
‘It can get really dark, and I’ve been through this, especially when you make a mistake like Lando’s where everybody can see it. You even hit your team-mate, so your whole team is thinking, “What’s going on?” It will be difficult for Lando to get back out of that.’
Norris certainly faces a tough task to get back into contention ahead of the next race, in Austria, a week on Sunday.
Norris, though, remains cautiously optimistic, at least publicly, saying: ‘There are plenty more races left. I don’t expect to catch Oscar easily. I have to work hard for it and make fewer mistakes than this weekend.’
A former McLaren star, John Watson, a sometime critic of Norris’s actions, tells Mail Sport: ‘He is prone to driving like a little boy. It will take a major reset to put things right.
Nico Rosberg famously scrapped on the track with his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton
Former McLaren driver John Watson (seated, in 1981) says the star has a lot left to learn
‘It is as if he lives in his own orbit. When he is driving on his own, he can do so as smoothly as Jenson Button or even Jim Clark, but he makes the wrong decisions when racing others. It is as if he is a computer-generated driver, with all the miles a privileged upbringing has given him.
‘He spends too long on Instagram, or his people do, and try to present him as a superstar, as if he is already champion, rather than working on earning that success. If he wins the title, which he still could even though it won’t be easy, he can capitalise on that fame. But it’s as if he believes he has already reached the summit.
‘Oscar is the opposite. You never hear any of that. He did not have his best weekend performance-wise in Canada by his own very high standards, though he qualified better and then raced cleanly. But he is quietly doing what is required.
‘He is much calmer and knows how to overtake. Lando showed in his fights with Max (Verstappen) last year and again this year that he has a lot to learn.’
