Lando Norris is 22 points behind Oscar Piastri after the McLaren crash in Canada – but without any mistakes of his own, he could still lead the world championship
The accident between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri last Sunday was by no means decisive for the world championship. Although the Brit is now 22 points behind his teammate after the crash he caused, theoretically this deficit can still be made up in just one race.
What is worrying for many experts is not Norris’s (still manageable) deficit in the drivers’ championship, but his error rate. The accident in Montreal was not the first mistake that cost Norris valuable points this season.
“Lando seems to have weekends where he is absolutely dominant, like Melbourne and Monaco, or everything just falls apart,” observed expert Martin Brundle. And “unfortunately,” Canada was a race from the second category, according to Brundle on Sky.
“That doesn’t mean he’s out of the championship,” he clarified, “but when you look at the turnaround in points, from the lead he had coming out of Melbourne to the deficit he now has, that’s a difference of 45 points in that time.”
Norris won the season opener in Melbourne from pole position. And because his teammate only finished ninth after a mistake, Norris left Australia with a 23-point lead – which has now turned into a 22-point deficit.
Piastri has led the World Championship since the fifth race of the season in Saudi Arabia, where Norris crashed in qualifying and made his biggest and most expensive mistake to date, alongside Canada. Apart from that, Norris has repeatedly been guilty of carelessness.
In Bahrain, for example, he incurred an unnecessary time penalty because he was too far forward in his starting box at the start, and in several races he made mistakes in qualifying, putting himself in a poor starting position for the race.
This also happened to him in Canada, where he only qualified seventh – and then crashed with Piastri in the race. Brundle therefore emphasizes: “Lando won’t win a world championship if he can’t prevent these weekends from happening. It’s as simple as that.”