The McLaren pair collided while battling for fourth at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with Norris clipping the rear of Piastri’s car while attempting a move down the main straight. The contact sent Norris into the wall and out of the race.
Norris took full responsibility for the incident, apologising immediately over team radio before seeking out Piastri in the media pen to apologise again post-race.
However, the 1997 world champion offered a different perspective in a post on Instagram, suggesting Piastri wasn’t entirely blameless.
“The clash between the two McLaren drivers, [it was] easy to point the finger at Norris,” Villeneuve said.
“He realised too late that Piastri was moving towards the left because he had his nose in the gearbox of Piastri, he didn’t realise it and Piastri was edging gradually towards the left.
“He’s not supposed to be doing that, it was a little bit nasty, so there will be some talks later inside the team.”
Another former world champion also weighed in on the incident, with 2016 winner Nico Rosberg offering a slightly different viewpoint.
The former Mercedes driver said the clash showed that Piastri continues to have a mental edge over Norris in their championship fight, drawing on his own experience battling a teammate for a world championship.
“The thing is that it also becomes a little bit traumatic at some point because you also start spiralling negatively down and down,” Rosberg said to Sky Sports F1 after the race.
“You get this reputation of ‘I’m making mistakes, I’m not good enough, I’m making mistakes’ and it starts to get to you in your head.
“I’ve been through this and it gets really dark and especially when you make a mistake like today where everybody can see it and you hit your teammate.
“It’s difficult for Lando to get out of that one.”
Rosberg added that he was glad the team allowed the pair to race and expressed confidence that the situation would be resolved internally.
“We’re thankful to McLaren to let them race,” he said. “There was a lot of excitement and it was an amazing battle to watch the two of them go head-to-head.
“This is not too difficult to sort out because Piastri for one is completely aside, he’s not done anything.
“Lando and Andrea just need to have a talk to him and just understand. You don’t even need to blame because it’s a misjudgment, you need to go through it and understand.”
After the race, McLaren maintained a united front in the aftermath of the incident.
Piastri said he had accepted Norris’s apology, while McLaren team principal Andrea Stella described the incident as a “misjudgement” and confirmed the team would review it internally.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown also weighed in on social media, writing: “And so it happened. Appreciate the candour, Lando. Solid race, Oscar. We learn. We go again together.”
The clash came just days after Norris had remarked that an incident between the pair was “inevitable.”
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