Piastri claims it was a "shame for the team" after his crash with Norris

Having been involved in an incident with his team-mate Lando Norris in the dying stages of Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri explained that he does not think that "there was any bad intentions" from the British racer.

Championship leading team McLaren never looked dominant over the Canadian Grand Prix weekend despite Lando Norris having set the pace in final practice.

His team-mate Oscar Piastri ended up third in qualifying, but the Briton made mistakes on both his flying laps in Q3 which left him in P7 on the grid.

The championship leader had an average start, and lost a place to Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli on the opening lap.

Norris meanwhile had started on the hard tyre and ran a long first stint. Despite his offset strategy, he was unable to make a one-stop strategy work. It meant that he rejoined the track in P5 after his second stop.

In the dying stages of the races, Norris hounded Piastri, who in turn was chasing Antonelli. With only six laps to go, Norris made a move and got his team mate in the hairpin, but Piastri retaliated and got back past.

However, Norris was eager to make the move on his team-mate, but he misjudged the distance to the Australian and swiped the rear of his car on the start-finish straight.

The touch sent Norris into the wall and out of the race, while Piastri limped home to collect a valuable haul of twelve points with a fourth-place finish.

Reflecting on his race, Piastri said that his start had a massive impact on his opportunities as he lost a place to Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

“It was a tricky race. It wasn’t my best start and then we were a little on the backfoot from there. In the second half of the race, the pace was good, it was just tough to overtake. We come away with 12 points which is what we could have maximised today.”

“I mean I obviously haven’t seen it so I don’t really know. I was defending the inside and then felt a small touch and that’s honestly all I have at the moment.

“Obviously a shame for the team. It was a bit of a difficult race apart from that. Just not the easiest of weekends. It’s not ideal for anyone, I’ve not actually seen the incident so I don’t know exactly what happened, but if Lando [Norris] has taken full responsibility then that’s how it goes I guess.

Pressed on to explain the incident from his perspective, Piastri stated: "It was but he [Norris] made quite a large move into Turn 10, I held my own into the chicane. It was definitely a tough battle but a clean one up until that point.

"I’ve not seen the incident but I don’t think there was any bad intentions involved I think it was just unfortunate really. I will go and have a look and we’re both fighting for a world championship and I’m very thankful to the team that they allow us to race, I don’t expect this to change anything in terms of that."

Speaking of McLaren's race pace, Piastri noted: "I think we had a little bit more pace but not enough to overtake basically. We tried to go long on both the stints but I think ultimately in the final stint the tyres held up better than we hoped for the others and we didn’t have enough of an advantage to do anything, so that was a bit of a shame.

"I think our pace was OK but not the race I expected with the bad start and that kind of cemented us in fourth and I don’t think we had enough of an advantage to do anything else."

Despite his incident with Norris, the Melbourne-born driver extended the lead in the drivers’ championship: "For me, this weekend wasn’t good enough and it’s still far far too early to think that that is an comfortable advantage or anything like that. There’s a long way to go in the season and we’ve got to try and improve on the whole."