All friends! Norris agreed today that McLaren has emerged stronger from Canada
In the immediate aftermath of the collision between the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in Canada team boss Andrea Stella was quick to suggest that now the inevitable contact had been got out the way everyone would learn and move on from it.
It was a sentiment echoed in Austria on Thursday by Norris, in the wake of some frank discussions over the past 10 days or so about the Briton breaking rule number one – hitting your team mate.
Norris, who took full responsibility within seconds of the incident happening, agrees that valuable lessons have indeed been learned – albeit via a somewhat painful process.
“There’s been a good amount of talks, there’s been good understanding of everything, realising my thoughts and understanding things from my side and explaining that to the team,” he said.
“But I think I made it clear from the immediate moment that I misjudged it, and I took the fault for it.
“Of course, not the most joyful conversations, but conversations that needed to be had, clearly, and obviously from us as a team, because it’s not just about myself, it is how we perform as a team.
“And we all know what rule number one was, and continues and will always be. So some very constructive things, and in the unfortunate way, but a good way. I think many things have come out stronger than I would say they were prior to the weekend.
“Which you might have not expect, but I think is a good outcome. Through an unfortunate circumstance, a lot has been learned, and a lot of a lot of things have turned into being stronger than they were before, which is just a good thing for all of us.”
Expanding on precisely what had been learned Norris made it clear that it was more a case of maintaining trust, and that the actual Papaya Rules that govern how the drivers fight each other have not changed.
“No, everything’s the same,” he said. “But I think one of the first good lessons was just me taking accountability for it, which I did in the moment, me owning up, me taking accountability for what happened, and responsibility for what happened.
“I think sets a good example for us as a team. Not that I’m here to try and set like the best example of how to earn up for mistakes! Also one of the things that over the last few years, we’ve done much, much better at, and I think we’re at the top level now, is how we can work as a team.
“Because it’s part of sport, it’s part of nature and it’s human to make mistakes, is taking responsibility, learning from it, and then coming forward and improving. So yes, I think from that point it was an unfortunate positive.
“But it’s also between the trust and the honesty, I think that Oscar and I have for one another, it’s important that we keep it up.”
Norris has seen how things can go wrong: “We stay strong as a team, because we don’t want to have the downfall that we know many other teams have had in the past. We want to race each other fair and hard and on the limit, and not have a repeat of what happened last time out.
“And that takes both of us, even though Canada was on me. So, from a mentality point of view, from a constructive point of view, I think that’s why it was positive.”
Norris admits that it wasn’t easy to get over the disappointment of Canada.
“It took me a little time, because my team means everything to me,” he said. “The people that I’ve grown up with, the people who have given me my opportunity in F1, and I want to win with McLaren.
“So for me, for what happened in Montreal, to have happened with my teammate, disregarding whether it was with any other car, but it was my teammate, this is probably the most painful part for me, because it’s the last thing that I would ever want to happen between me and my teammate.
“Of course for the action to come for me, so I felt bad, I felt very bad for for the team, and all the people who work in McLaren. So it was a tough couple days.
“But also I think something I got better at is dealing with those moments and speaking to Andrea, my team around me, Zak, and trying to move on as quickly as possible was very important. So coming to this weekend with that in the past, and go again.”
Sauber has made good progress in recent weeks. Pic: @tinnekephotography
One of the anomalies of the past couple of seasons has been a lack of progress on track by the Sauber Formula 1 team, despite the huge efforts made by Audi to ramp up the organisation ahead of 2026.
You could perhaps argue that the mediocre performance has been because of those efforts, given the significant ongoing changes at Hinwil and the inevitable time lag associated with bringing in new people and restructuring.
The good news is that recent races have seen genuine progress made, with an upgrade working well and the team – with the very capable help of Nico Hulkenberg – executing weekends effectively.
Boosted by a strong first lap Hulkenberg went from 15th to sixth in Spain before gaining a bonus spot from Max Verstappen’s penalty, and then in Canada he rose from 11th to eighth.
Throw in his seventh place in the season opener and he lies 11th in the World Championship, with more points than the likes of Carlos Sainz and Pierre Gasly.
“Feels good, feels very positive,” he said when I asked him about his Montreal race. “Very happy, of course, to continue that trend, and carry the momentum into here and onwards from here.
“I think at the end of the day, it’s down to the performance upgrade, it’s showing some good performance and promise in the race again. I think more maybe than in quali. So it was a good, clean race.
“Yeah, it’s positive. I think all the work from the last few months, or the last six months, is kind of paying off a bit. And you see paying dividends, which is obviously a rewarding feeling, very nice, and how it should be.
“So we need to keep doing what we’re doing. And the meantime, hopefully we can find a bit more performance in the next couple of weeks.”
Hulkenberg is doing exactly what Audi wants him to do, which was to use his vast experience to move the team forward and bring home the points.
Despite some good performances his rookie team mate Gabriel Bortoleto has yet to score, and to his credit the Brazilian concedes that Hulkenberg is doing a better job.
“I think he’s taking out of the car more than we actually should be,” he said. “I think he’s an excellent driver, and I really admire everything he’s doing, because I think it’s impressive. I’m happy because we have such a similar pace in quali and in the races as well. It’s just that he manages to get every single opportunity.
“And I believe a lot comes from the experience, you see the race in a different way that I’m not able yet to see. And I think he’s very good at doing this, so I think I’m learning on that way from him, and hopefully I can do the same steps he’s doing right now, and start scoring some points for the team.”
With 10 races now under his belt, the car looking stronger and a lot of familiar European tracks coming up, Bortoleto now has the opportunity to show what he can do.
“I think our season has been a very good one,” he said. “But unfortunately in terms of results in the races, every time something happens, so we are not able to use the opportunities. And we know we so far this season, maybe now it’s changing, but we didn’t have a car consistently to score points.
“So the opportunities we had to score points, we missed with me, and from many reasons, sometimes from my side, sometimes from other things and but again, I think this happens to everyone, but it’s frustrating to not score points, obviously, because I really want to tart scoring points and delivering a bit for the team, with all the hard work they are putting in.”
The upgrades aside the less tangible contribution to the general upswing has been from the leadership team of Mattia Binotto and Jonathan Wheatley.
The latter obviously brought winning know-how from Red Bull, and in the short time that he’s been on board his contributions in terms of improving processes and procedures have been embraced.
“I’ve put myself under a lot of pressure to take on as much information I can,” he says. “Mattia has been helping me understand how we’ve ended up where we are, and what his observations are, and then, honestly, the last two races, we’ve put some changes in place.
“Certainly in terms of communication how we go into the race, our preparation going into the race. So changing things a little bit. No huge changes, you can’t do that in the middle of the season, but certainly, I would say the last two races, being here in the race team, being sat on the pit wall, it’s an incredibly professional approach.”
For any racing team success is about constant evolution and improvement.
“What I would say, and I’ve said from the beginning, is it’s important that we learn from our mistakes,” says Wheatley. “We’re going to make mistakes, and we have done this year, but we’ve learned from them, and there’s a real energy about that.
“People are feeling confident. The environment here is recrimination free, and you need that in order to push on and move forward. So we’re learning, we’re getting stronger, and I think as a team, we’ve just got that momentum behind us at the moment, and it feels great.
“And plus when you’re putting things on the car that make it faster, you know that your tools are working. And that’s a great situation to be in looking at 2026 as well.”
Wheatley mentions confidence, and there’s no doubt that his presence and winning records at Red Bull has helped to instil it in the team, although it’s difficult for him to judge his own contribution.
“It is hard, because you look in the mirror and you brush your teeth in the morning, you’re the same person you were yesterday!,” he says.
“Look, I have spent a huge amount of time in the paddock. I like to I’d like to think that the measured way I approach things when they go wrong, I think giving people the confidence, because you can talk about creating an environment that’s recrimination free, you can talk about creating an environment where people thrive – you have to live it.
“In fact, I live for working in teams that are engaged, that are excited, that are building momentum, finding small advantages, feeling confident in doing that and putting their hands up when they make a mistake.
“And I think I’m living with that here now. And as I’ve said, the last two races, sat on the pit wall has been fantastic. It’s been a really, really professional approach.”
The focus remains on 2026, and of course everything depends on the performance of the new power unit, which remains a complete unknown at this stage.
But however strong it is the team needs to maximise the potential of the package, and the remainder of this season is an extended opportunity to prepare for the next chapter.
“You can say believe, you can say develop a willing mentality, but until you’re on that journey, until you have the momentum, it’s very hard for people to actually believe it,” says Wheatley.
“I’ve worked on racing teams my whole life. Every winter you rebuild yourself, you come forward and go, this is going to be the year, this is going to be the year.
“And if you’re not delivering, it’s hard to get that momentum. But like I say, the structure here, the way things are going at the factory, the way things are going racing at the moment, I think it’s giving people confidence that we really are going in the right direction.”
He’s scored points twice in a row but Alonso still wants a quicker car on Sundays
After starting the season with an eight-race drought Fernando Alonso has now logged two consecutive points finishes, and the signs are that there’s more to come.
The Spaniard followed up his ninth in Spain with a seventh in Canada last weekend as best of the rest behind the top four teams.
It’s clear now that Aston Martin has made a decent step since its last batch of upgrades, and that it is back in the midfield fight.
However while the team has improved the AMR25 over one lap Alonso is still keen to improve race day performance. which he believes hasn’t kept up with progress in qualifying.
As in Imola in Montreal Alonso followed a strategy of focussing on the medium C5 tyre through qualifying, rather than the slightly less predictable C6.
He was P6 in Saturday’s FP3 session, and then with a display of remarkable consistency he maintained that position through Q1, Q2 and crucially, Q3.
“Let’s do it tomorrow!,” he said after the session when I drew his attention to the stats. “We are happy. Obviously, Norris is P7, Leclerc P8, so it’s a little bit unrealistic to think that we will finish in P6. But the job today has been done.
“A very tricky FP3 session with the wind direction change today, it was for everybody. A lot of people oversteering, especially in the last corner with the tailwind and things like that. So we changed the car a little bit into qualifying, and it was back to normal in quali. So happy for that.
“It seems that I’m able to push the car to the limit now in the last few races, since Imola. With the new package, I’m much more linked with the car, I feel the car, and I can push to the maximum. And I feel in a good moment. So let’s confirm it tomorrow.”
Although the C5 strategy clearly worked Alonso insisted that pursuing it was not a no-brainer before the session.
“In Imola, we had the feeling that the C5 especially on our car gave us the confidence to push a little bit more. And then in Monaco, it was 50-50, and then here still 50-50.
“Even after qualifying, I think we’re still not sure which tyre, because some people are faster on the red tyre than the medium. But we still believe that on our car is a little bit more robust with the medium.”
For the race his focus was to lead the pursuit of the top teams – and crucially for the midfield battle in the World Championship, beat the Saubers.
“Normally on Sunday we do struggle a little bit more than Saturday,” he admitted. “And as I said, we have very fast cars behind us. So yeah, P8/P9 – we need points, that’s for sure. We want to be in the top 10 tomorrow, especially after Nico [Hulkenberg] scored so many points in Barcelona.
“We are tied with Sauber now, but behind them [on best result], and we want to go back to be at least in front of them by tomorrow afternoon. That’s a personal challenge now.”
Regarding the ultimate potential he added: “It depends on what is happening in front of us. There are many races that all the top teams are finishing the race. Maybe tomorrow is the day that there are a couple of DNFs…”
In the end he only had one helping hand from a retirement ahead, but other than that, it went to plan.
As he expected Norris and Leclerc soon found a way past, and then having lost out to Hulkenberg he did what he needed to do and got back ahead before the flag on his way to seventh – enough to put Aston two points ahead of Sauber in the World Championship.
“I think realistically on the pace, we knew that eighth maybe was the maximum,” he said when I asked about his afternoon. “And we were eighth until Lando had the DNF, and then it became seventh.
“Happy with the car. I mean, I didn’t have any big issues with the car, apart from maybe excessive tyre deg, but still Sunday pace is not quite yet in the rhythm I think of the weekend.
“We are sometimes one or two tenths away from the top teams in qualifying, and then we are one minute away, in the race. So definitely, Sunday is still our weak point on the weekend, and we need to make some maybe set-up work or priority into Sunday for the next few races.”
With 14 races to go just eight points separate Haas, Racing Bulls, Aston Martin and Sauber, and Alpine is only 11 points adrift in last place. There’s a lot to play for.
“When I saw Nico in front of us, and 10 laps to go, and I said, ‘Wow.’ It was very competitive. And the Sauber clearly made a step forward. So we need to keep the pace. If not, we will lose again the position soon.
“But at the same time, we are getting closer to Haas, closer to Racing Bulls. It’s going to be a nice battle, until Abu Dhabi.”
Hamilton had another weekend of learning in Canada as new parts are finally on their way
For Lewis Hamilton the Canadian GP was very much a case of Groundhog Day, and not just because his race was spoiled by hitting one of the unfortunate animals and damaging his floor.
It was also yet another case of arriving at a track where he’s had a lot of success only to find that the unchanged Ferrari SF-25 behaves in a completely different manner to what he’s been used to at Mercedes. It’s a scenario that has been repeated at every venue this year.
As always it was a case of trying to improve session-by-session and find a way to get the best out of the car that he has.
The end result was a sixth place, and he was at least happier than in Spain a fortnight earlier, when he described it as his worst race ever.
He wasn’t too happy on Friday in Montreal, but P5 in qualifying was a decent outcome.
“We’ve progressed coming into today,” he said on Saturday afternoon. “So that is a positive. More often not we go through P1 and then P2, often at the previous races P2 has not been so great, because there’s been something wrong with the car, like the floor is not working, or the rear wing is not working.
“There’s always been something that meant that we’re down on downforce or something.
“And so then you have a bad P2 and you’re kind of recovering in P3. But we had a good, solid base yesterday, and then today, we made progress. We didn’t change a huge amount, and the car felt solid. We moved forwards, which is I think a first this season. So I’m grateful to get through to Q3.”
When I asked in what areas he’d made progress he said: “I think probably today most progress came from my driving, adapting driving style. So just made a few changes of how I drove.
“This car drives so much different to what I had before. You go into low-speed corners and you’re waiting and waiting; it doesn’t want to turn.”
He underlined his point with a vivid demonstration of crossed arms – the racing driver sign language for terminal understeer.
In Sunday’s race Hamilton initially sat in P5 behind Oscar Piastri, but as early as lap 12 he lost a chunk of downforce after his collision with the unfortunate groundhog.
Thereafter he lost out to team mate Charles Leclerc and to Lando Norris, before the latter’s crash promoted him back to P6.
“Until the damage, I was kind of holding on to Piastri,” he said. “With the damage, then I started to drop off from Piastri, and then we probably should have stopped around a similar sort of time, but we for some reason stayed out and then I lost a ton of time, came out behind a bunch of people, got stuck behind people, just sitting there in no-man’s land.
“But to still come away with a sixth it’s a positive. I think if everything was perfect, if we had done everything right and we didn’t have any problems, maybe we would have fourth.”
As noted he was in a much better place than he was after Spain, despite the relatively modest result. He could at least see signs of progress.
“I think mostly just me adapting,” he noted. “But I think this track really highlighted the weaknesses of the car, and I’ve never had a car understeer so much at low-speed here, just doesn’t want to turn through Turn 2 and Turn 10. So definitely not my most favourite weekend, but the next one will be better.”
He added: “Just incremental steps. We’ve not had any upgrades or anything like that. So it’s the same car for quite some time now, and so with the same package each weekend, I’m just challenging the guys. I’m constantly battling the engineers, asking questions.
“They set things up and this is how we always do it. And I’m like, Well, what about this? And so we work on trying things, and bit by bit, we are making progress. We’ve improved in our qualifying from Monaco onwards, which is positive.
“But ultimately, we need upgrades. We need an upgrade to be able to fight the guys up front.”
Hamilton and Leclerc have both mentioned upgrades on a consistent basis. Hitherto Fred Vasseur has been coy on commenting to the media. But after Montreal when I pushed him on the subject the Frenchman finally confirmed that something is coming “before UK,” with more to follow.
A performance boost before his home race would be welcome for Hamilton.
“It’s my first half of the year in a new team,” he said when I asked about the obvious frustration of having to wait. “It’s interesting to see different how different teams work and operate.
“There’s been times in my career where you’ve had a whole bunch of upgrades very, very early on in the season, and then you plough ahead very early, and then you stop and taper off. And then sometimes it’s been slower.
“It’s also in the last year of this generation of cars, it’s harder to find performance. And also, you’ve got to be focused on the next year. With this car, hopefully we can still fight for a second in the constructors’. That would be great, yeah, but I want a car that can win next year, so that’s priority.”
Hamilton has faced a lot of criticism this year given his struggles, but he insists that it’s all about the bigger picture.
“What all you guys don’t see is what’s happening in the background, and there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot that needs improving. A lot of things need to be changed. For me, I know we’re not fighting for a win this year. I know we’re not in the championship, which is not a great feeling.
“And also I know I’m in a period of getting accustomed to working with the team. foundation building and trying to steer them to make those changes so that next year we can have a car that can win, and we can then fight and be consistent and do have strategy and all those different things. So with that in mind, I’m okay, but obviously I want to win.
“And so when you’re not competing at the front, you’re not fighting for podiums, I’m definitely a little bit gutted with that. I was hoping today I’d have a fight for a podium, but we don’t have the performance currently, so hopefully, with an upgrade, maybe at some stage, we’ll be a bit sharper.”
Andrea Stella insists that valuable lessons will be learned from Montreal
It was inevitable given the high stakes that at some stage this year McLaren team mates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri would get into a tangle on track. Even team boss Andrea Stella acknowledged recently that it was a matter of when, and not if.
It happened in Montreal on Sunday, but in slightly unusual circumstances in that the drivers weren’t racing each other into a corner with blame to be apportioned, as was the case in the past with controversial famous moments involving Lewis Hamilton/Nico Rosberg or Sebastian Vettel/Mark Webber, for example.
In this instance they’d survived a wheel-to-wheel encounter heading into the final chicane, and it was on the straight that followed that Norris hit the back of Piastri, and paid the price.
He made a simple misjudgement under DRS in the Australian’s slipstream, and immediately told the team on the radio that it was his fault. Later he did the same when he bumped into Piastri in the TV interview pen.
It might not have been the typical sort of team mate conflict that we were expecting, but contact is contact, and the drivers are well aware that it’s a cardinal sin in any team.
Fortunately McLaren is in a good place at the moment, and Stella is a brilliant manager, always able to deal with any situation and find the positives.
When he spoke to the media shortly after the race he’d already found a way to ensure that the incident could be used to ensure that there would be no repeat.
“We said a few times that it wasn’t a matter of if, it was more a matter of when,” said the Italian. “And the when is Canada 2025. We never want to see two McLarens having contact. This is part of our principles. We saw it today.
“This is just a result of miscalculation, a misjudgement from a racing point of view, which obviously should not happen, but at the same time, it’s part of racing, and We did appreciate the fact that Lando immediately owned the situation.
“He raised his hand, he took responsibility for the accident, and he apologised immediately to the team. He came to apologise to me as team principal in order to apologise to the entire team, and it’s important the way we respond and we react to these situations, which ultimately will be a very important learning point.”
He added: “I don’t think it’s a learning from a theoretical point of view, because the principle was already there, but it’s a learning in terms of experiencing how painful these situations can be, and this will only make us stronger in terms of our internal competition and in terms of the way we go racing.”
For Stella Norris’s immediate mea culpa was crucial, and it was also a reflection of the team-focussed environment that he has built.
“I think in order to make an assessment as to the reason of having this sort of misjudgement from a racing point of view, I think we will have to have a few good conversations,” he said.
“Now that we are in the heat of the moment, for me, the most important thing is to see a reaction where people take responsibility of their actions, and we have already seen it.
“And I talked to Oscar as well, and he sort of is cool with the situation, because Lando apologised, they know that a misjudgement in racing can happen.
“But I think obviously in the coming days, thanks to these conversations, we will have to go into what is needed in order to make sure that when we go racing, we preserve the margins that are required.”
Stella downplayed the suggestion that having qualified only seventh Norris was perhaps under extra pressure to find a way by Piastri and get a result.
“From Lando’s point of view, specifically, I’m not sure that there is any reason to do with the fact that he might have struggled a little bit yesterday in qualifying to capitalise on his speed,” he said.
“Speed that he had demonstrated throughout the weekend. Surely, there was a bit of frustration for not having been able to qualify as high as he would have liked. But at the moment, I wouldn’t say that that’s the reason why there was a misjudgement today.
“I think this is too long a shot in terms of correlating these two events, but definitely, there will be good conversations, but they will happen once we are all rested and calm and we have the possibility to take all the learning and discharge what doesn’t have to come with us in the future.”
From the outside at least if there was any glass half full reflection it was the fact that as team McLaren had lost only a fifth place, as opposed to a first and second. However when I put that to him Stella insisted that the relative low cost didn’t make the incident any less serious.
“The fact that the points today, or what we were fighting for, was not a victory – even if you never know in a race until the chequered flag – I think this is just a very, very minor mitigation, let me say.
“We act based on principles, and based on principles, there should be no contact between two McLarens. So from this point of view, if anything, let’s say Lando pays the price, from a championship points point of view, and let me say, luckily, there was no double penalty with the points loss for the other car, which had no responsibility in this contact.”
The key thing now is to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Stella is adamant that it’s now a case of lessons learned.
“I think in terms of the moving forward and possible repeat or not when we go racing, and there’s many races like nowadays, because 24 races, and sprints, so more and more situations where we can have these kinds of episodes, like I said before.
“I think having experienced, rather than having talked, even if the conversations we had about that, they were certainly strong, impactful and absolved, but having experienced this kind of situation, I think it will make us just more robust as a team, and in terms of each of our two drivers against these situations because the two McLarens racing close to one another, it will happen again.
“But there will have to be better judgment in terms of the distance, because today, in effect, is just a matter of distance between the two cars. There’s nothing like one driver wanted to demonstrate something else.
“If anything, the dangerous situation was more approaching the last chicane when they were side-by-side. And I saw some wisdom there. But somehow after that, and we know that with the DRS, there could be some misjudgements that we have seen in the past as well.”
Stella insists that the drivers will remain free to race, and that it really will be a case of the best man winning – the team won’t make a call.
“The being free to race and the being clear as to how we go racing, is a value of racing,” he said.
“And is a value of racing that we want to try and exercise and respect as much as we can, rather than every time that we have a proximity between the two cars, then having control from the pit wall.
“I think like that, racing may soon become a bit of an artifact, and we want to give Lando and Oscar opportunities to race and opportunities to be at the end of the season in the position that they deserved to be in based on their merit, based on their performance based on the racing quality that they have expressed through the season, rather than being at the end of the season and realise that the points have been controlled more by the team, rather than the quality of their driving.
“This is not necessarily a simple and straight exercise, but we want to try and do it as best as we can. So I don’t foresee that today’s episode will change our approach from this point of view, if anything, it will reinforce, and it will strengthen that the principle we have require more caution by our drivers.
“Because if we say that there should be no contact between the two McLarens, we need to have the margins to make sure that we have no contact, even if, in a DRS situation, the car may get almost a little bit sucked onto the other car, and cause this kind of misjudgement as to the distance.”
The bottom line is that Montreal will ultimately be a perfect demonstration of how with Zak Brown’s help Stella has built a great team, and has proven to be a great boss.
“In the heat of the moment that looks like the worst disaster ever,” said Stella. “But in reality, the strength of being racers, the strength that comes from having a strong culture, is the fact that you will process the episodes you will review, you will take all the positive learning, and you will dismiss anything that doesn’t have to come with us into the way we go racing in the future.
“This is the mindset that we all have at McLaren, and I think this has been proven by the way Lando handled the situation, and definitely that’s going to be the kind of conversation that we will not only have with our drivers, but this is the kind of conversations that we will have with the entire team.
“We lean on our culture, which is very strong, and we use these episodes once they are a little chilled and our mind is colder than it’s in the heat of the moment to become a stronger team with two stronger drivers.”
Lando Norris will start the Canadian GP from a frustrated P7
The balance of power at McLaren swung towards Oscar Piastri again in Montreal as Lando Norris finished qualifying in P7 following a frustrating Q3 session.
With Piastri himself only third behind George Russell and Max Verstappen it was a below par performance by the Woking team, reflecting perhaps the normal ebb and flow of circuit form and the fact that even the championship leaders have to get everything right to stay on top.
Norris had been looking solid earlier in qualifying, taking second spot in Q2, but it came undone in the final part.
“Just a couple of big mistakes,” he said when I asked him about his session. “One, hitting the wall on the last lap in the exit of seven, and first lap I think the last corner. So yeah, just two mistakes that cost me, I guess.
“I think we’ve clearly not been as quick as normal. I think that’s just because of the layout of the track. I think the car is still performing relatively well.
“And I was happy through all the qualifying. Maybe not the car to take pole today, but quick enough to be up there, and then fighting for a top three.”
Norris conceded that Montreal is not an easy track to get right.
“Just very low grip, I think first of all, is one of the bigger things. And therefore the car balance just never comes together as much as what it does in other tracks. So probably just low grip, and some of the kerb riding bumps, which just hurts us it seems more than some others.”
He added: “It’s very easy track to just push one percent too much, and pay the price, and that’s what I did today.”
Norris is running a front suspension update in Canada as part of an ongoing effort to make him feel more comfortable with the car, especially in qualifying trim. He admitted it was hard to properly assess it.
“It’s tough to say, because this track, everything just feels different. So I think it’s something we’ll have to wait and see on the next few races, through Austria and Silverstone and so forth, to understand, and maybe back-to-back test between them both.
“It’s nothing that I felt just yet, but it’s more than when you go to a new track, it’s hard to remember everything perfectly relative to other tracks. So like I said, we just need a bit more time to understand if it’s any better or not.”
Asked if it was expected to be most advantageous in qualifying he said: “I mean, it can be a benefit elsewhere, but it’s not a guarantee that’s going to be a benefit just yet.
“So like I said, this is aimed to maybe give a bit more feeling. It’s not aimed to make us quicker or give the car more performance. So it’s again something that we have to review over time.”
From seventh on the grid all is not lost, as Canada is a race in which stuff usually happens, so there is a chance to make progress with good strategy calls, and possibly a little mayhem ahead.
“I hope so. It’ll make my race a bit more interesting, and the more opportunity that comes my way the better tomorrow.
“I think we can go forwards anyway, but not a lot. It’s not like an easy one-two, like we have been on other tracks. So it’s going to be a bit more difficult. But, yeah, anything that can help us will be very welcome.
“I think a podium is tough, just because we don’t have the pace we’ve had in the last few races. But it could be easily, a one, two or three-stop, depending on how the tyres behave tomorrow.
“So of course, I’ll hope for a bit more to happen. Not as confident as in other places, for sure, but confident we can go forwards. But clearly, I think we don’t have the best car today, so we’ll be a struggle to get to the top.”
Four decades ago I landed my first media pass at the 1985 Le Mans 24 Hours
Today represents a special 40th anniversary for me, as what transpired on Wednesday June 12th 1985 proved to be the catalyst for my career as a motor sporting journalist.
It was around lunchtime on that day that I arrived at Le Mans railway station after an overnight trip from London. I caught a bus to the circuit, talked my way into the paddock without any kind of accreditation, and from there things escalated pretty quickly…
I find it hard to believe that 40 years have passed since the magical trip to Le Mans that would change my life.
But let’s go to the start of my story. At the time I had recently turned 20, and I’d just come to the end of the first year of my university business studies degree.
A devoted motor racing enthusiast, and obsessive reader of Autosport since I bought my first copy at age 10, I was desperate to find a summer job in the sport that I loved so much. I was a regular visit to Brands Hatch, and I’d been to a dozen Grands Prix as a paying fan, including three trips to Zolder and one to Zandvoort.
But I wanted desperately to be an insider, having had a taste in my early teens helping Adrian Russell, a local secondhand sportscar dealer who as a 40-something amateur had competed in FIA F2 events and the Aurora championship.
I’d long ago given up hope of making it on the technical side, as A-level maths and physics proved so complicated that I had abandoned any plans I might have had of pursuing an engineering degree.
I guess at the back of my mind I had dreams of being a journalist – I’d even mentioned the idea to a bemused school careers specialist when I was 15 or so – but it seemed about as achievable as joining NASA and heading into space.
But anything would do, and with my future business studies qualification in mind I wrote to the three F1 teams based within easy reach of my south London home, namely McLaren, Tyrrell and FORCE/Haas. Inevitably they all wrote back saying they had no temporary opportunities, although the letter from Ron Dennis at least said I should try again when I graduated.
I subsequently explored a few other avenues, including working at Brands Hatch – I’ll never forget the steely glare of the dragon lady on the circuit’s reception desk, who had no interest whatsoever in helping me when I offered my services.
I then came up with the idea of approaching Barry Bland, well known then as the organiser of the Macau GP. I showed up one day at his London office. He couldn’t help, but he referred me instead to someone who shared his premises, and who might need a helping hand.
That man was Chris Parsons, familiar more recently as a Le Mans pundit on Eurosport, but then a marketing man and racing enthusiast who had just set up OSCAR – the ‘Organisation for Sportscar Racing,’ a fledgling sort of FOCA for the then expanding FIA World Endurance Championship.
To my surprise he suggested that he might indeed need some assistance at the upcoming Le Mans 24 Hours, so I eagerly offered my services, and began planning my trip.
Nearer the time when I rang up to confirm details Chris said the opportunity was no longer there. I told him I was by now committed to coming, and to placate me he said he would ask his pal Roy Baker – entrant of two Tiga Group C2 cars – if he could do with a spare pair of hands. That was all the incentive I needed. I just wanted a chance.
Thus on Tuesday June 11th I set off by train from London Victoria to Dover, having finished my last end of term exam earlier that day. I hopped on a ferry to Calais, followed by a train to Paris Gare de Nord. I can’t remember much about the journey, but I assume that somewhere along the way I managed to catch some sleep!
A trip on the metro took me to Gare Montparnasse, from where I took the train to Le Mans. On arrival I bought a postcard from a little tabac to send to my parents – in those pre-mobile and email days I wanted to let them know that I had made it. That postcard now sits in my office.
“I have just got off the train at Le Mans and I’m about to get a bus to the circuit,” I wrote. “Journey was okay. Weather is cool. I still don’t know if I can get in or not!”
Not exactly a good calling card for a would-be journalist, but I guess I included all the relevant facts…
Somehow I found a bus heading in the general direction of the circuit, and after a long trek from where it dropped me I told the guys on the various gates I passed through that I worked for Roy Baker Racing, and my team pass was in the paddock. Fortunately they accepted my story, and I eventually made it to the inner sanctum.
And then for reasons I can’t recall instead of seeking out Roy and the team I was ostensibly going to work for, I looked for Chris Parsons, who was using a little caravan as base camp for OSCAR.
I don’t know whether he’d forgotten that he’d changed his mind, or was just impressed that I’d actually shown up. But all of a sudden the (unpaid) OSCAR job was back on. I never did work for the late Roy Baker, although he was to become a good friend over the years.
OSCAR was running a sort of official news service for the championship, and my job was to run around and gather information for Mark Cole, the journalist who was actually writing the press releases. I would then distribute them around the paddock and media centre, and run other errands, like taking messages from OSCAR to the team bosses.
From somewhere Chris managed to produce an ACO press pass – technically that weekend I was accredited by Mosport Park, the venue of an upcoming WEC race!
Meanwhile when it dawned on him that I had nowhere to stay – it never occurred to me that I might need to sort something out – he agreed to let me crash out in the official OSCAR caravan, on the basis that I was out of the way when it was needed as an office in the mornings.
So there I was, suddenly at the centre of the action at one of the biggest races in the world, dashing around the paddock, the pit lane and through the alleyways in the back of the old pit complex, still exactly as it was in the Steve McQueen movie. It was a dream come true. That weekend I met team bosses, drivers and journalists, and one of those encounters was to change my life.
Up in the old press tribune opposite the pits I bumped into Quentin Spurring. Known to everyone as Q, he was then the editor of Autosport, as well as its WEC correspondent. But to me, steeped in the magazine since I was a wee lad, he might as well have been God.
I told him what I was up to, and handed him a copy of that day’s OSCAR press release. And then out of my back pocket I produced a tatty copy of a rather amateurish CV that I had typed up before I left home, just in case it came in useful. There wasn’t really much on it, as I hadn’t really done anything up to then except study and read Autosport, so it didn’t take long for Q to scan it.
He mentioned the name of my school, and I responded by naming the one he had attended. He looked a little surprised, but impressed. I’d done my homework. Many times I had scanned the potted biographies of racing journalists in a handy reference book called the Motor Racing Directory, looking for clues on how they had started their careers. And for some reason that little detail of Q’s education had stuck in my mind. I guess that caught his attention…
I spent an amazing few days dashing around the paddock. The Joest Porsche 956 won the race, and the weekend came to an end all too soon. On the Monday morning a guy I’d met from Canon cameras gave me a lift to Paris. He dropped me at his office, and I did the tourist bit at the Pompidou Centre before heading off to Calais by train and getting my ferry back to Dover, and finally a train to London.
That could have been the end of my motor racing adventure. But in the following days I badgered Chris Parsons by phone, and he said if I could get myself to the next WEC race in Hockenheim, I could help out there too.
Not too convinced about German public transport, I decided to try and get a lift instead. So I rang Group C2 team Spice Engineering and arranged to meet their motorhome at Dover a few days before the race.
I was standing at the gate of the ferry terminal at 11am on the Wednesday morning or whatever it was, and sure enough the aforementioned team vehicle came into view at the agreed time. I was on my way to the Hockenheim 1000kms – and it was a free ride! Team boss Jeff Hazell, who had been at Williams just a few years previously, was a bit surprised when he realised that I was also planning to sleep in the motorhome. I managed to convince him…
I met Q again that weekend, and bothered the poor man with another sales pitch. Then the week after that came the British GP. A contact from Le Mans had put me in touch with someone involved in running the Silverstone media centre, and I landed myself my first F1 press pass and spent the weekend doing whatever odd jobs were required, without payment.
Q showed up once again, and this time I surprised him by handing over a copy of report of the Hockenheim WEC race I had written, just to see if I could string a few words together. By now he must have thought I was his stalker…
My persistence paid off, and a couple of days later the phone rang at my parents’ house. It was Q. Somebody at Autosport was going away on their summer holiday for a couple of weeks, and they needed a spare pair of hands. Would I be interested in coming in and helping out at £2.50 an hour?
There was no guarantee that I would last beyond the first day, but I didn’t need to think it over. I had a foot in the door…
So it was that on Monday July 29th I headed not to the main Autosport office in Teddington but to its satellite base at its typesetters in an old industrial building near London’s Old Street station. Following the instructions I’d been given I climbed the stairs to the top floor, and I eventually found a dreary, barely furnished office.
It served as home for the junior members of the magazine’s editorial team on every Monday and Tuesday, when that week’s issue was being put to bed. The only things in the room were some tables and chairs, and a collection of ancient manual typewriters – this was before the days of word processors. Scattered around were pages of that week’s magazine, in various stages of completion.
My three new colleagues were already there, working away. Their names, I was to find out, were Bruce Jones, Tony Dodgins and Joe Saward. They acknowledged this wide-eyed interloper with an air of curiosity – who was this kid, and why had their usually sane boss Q given him a chance to join their profession?
Bruce handed me my first job – proofreading and subbing a Nigel Roebuck interview with Bernie Ecclestone. Then after a few minutes of instruction, with the help of a scalpel and a can of glue, I designed and laid out the pages for the story, including choosing the pictures. I was in the magazine business…
As well as getting involved in production after a little hustling I was allowed to write race reports in the weeks that followed. The first was an FF2000 event at Brands won by Martin Donnelly, the second an entire club meeting at Thruxton, which included a prestigious Esso FF1600 round. I made a point of talking to as many of these ambitious young drivers as I could – and that day I met Damon Hill, Johnny Herbert, Eddie Irvine, Mark Blundell and Bertrand Gachot for the first time.
I also continued to get myself to World Sportscar races with portable typewriter in hand – Richard Lloyd picked me up at Dover in the RLR team motorhome for the trip to the Spa 1000kms, where I covered the C2 class with my first report on an international event.
I must have done something right, because after my initial two-week opportunity expired Q asked me back to help out in the office when someone else went on holiday. I would combine work and studies for the next couple of years, and I just kept plugging away, getting to races under my own steam as and when I could.
And then the week I finished university in July 1987 I landed a fulltime role at Autosport – my dream really had come true…
Carlos Sainz was the first driver to try the Madrid layout
The addition of Madrid and the loss of Imola are the only two major changes in the 2026 FIA F1 World Championship calendar, which was formally announced this morning.
The new event has been given a September slot under the Spanish GP name, while Barcelona retains its spring date for what is the last event on its current contract, although it is now mid-June. The circuit still hopes to extend its arrangement.
Last weekend Carlos Sainz became the first driver to sample part of the new Madring layout when he conducted a demo run for Williams.
In addition F1 has taken advantage of the loss of Imola to bring Canada forward and put it after Miami, so that the season starts with a run of seven flyaway races amd there is no interruption to the European leg of the season.
F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said: “2026 will be a new era for Formula 1 where we will witness a brand-new set of regulations for our sport, the cars and the engines that will be powered by 100% sustainable fuel. We are excited to welcome Madrid to the calendar, and to see huge automotive brands like Audi, Cadillac and Ford join the Formula 1 grid.
“It promises to be an unforgettable season, where once again we will come together at 24 amazing global venues to watch the best drivers in the world push themselves to the limit and produce incredible wheel to wheel racing for our millions of fans watching around the globe.
“I want to thank all our fans for their passionate support and the FIA, with all the volunteers, marshals and officials, as well as the promoters, partners, sponsors, host cities and the local motor racing federations for their commitment and support in delivering this schedule in what I know will be another historic year for Formula 1.”
Because of the new regulations and the need for teams to log as many miles as possible with their unproven PUs the testing schedule has been revamped for 2026, with nine days rather than three, and an earlier start than usual.
Other than any individual filming days the cars will first run in Barcelona at the end of January, but behind closed doors and with no media presence, and the teams presumably encouraged not to show their definitive liveries.
Five days have been allocated for what is known in the FIA sporting regulations as Pre-Season Private Collective Testing, and teams can choose on which three they run.
That gives them the option to either run early and have more time for homework before the next test, or run later in the week, and have two extra days to prepare.
The Barcelona running will be followed by two three-day Pre-Season Public Collective Testing sessions in Bahrain in early February, with a five-day gap between them.
The team had a great race in Monaco but otherwise it’s been a difficult recent run for Haas
Form and luck swings back and forth among F1’s closely-matched midfield teams, as we saw with Sauber’s remarkable fifth place in Spain.
Just the previous weekend Esteban Ocon had secured a solid seventh for Haas in Monaco, but either side of that it’s been a difficult run for the US-owned outfit.
After a double score in Bahrain the team didn’t better a 12th place in the three races prior to Monaco, and then in Barcelona Ocon and Oliver Bearman finished 16th and 17th.
Ocon wasn’t helped in Spain by being one of the few drivers not to pit for fresh tyres under the late safety car, while Bearman had a 10-second penalty as a result of his fraught fight with Liam Lawson.
Bearman hasn’t had a lot of luck lately, and his progress was hampered by missing his final Q1 lap when the clock ran down in Imola, and by a 10-place grid penalty for a red flag offence in Monaco. In Spain he at least made Q2, but in the end he started 15th as a late set-up change didn’t really pay off.
Recent upgrades to at least seem to have improved the VF-25, which had had a weakness in faster corners.
“We will look at these three weeks, take the positives and draw some conclusion out of these three,” said Ocon when I asked him about his Barcelona race.
“I think there’s a clear pattern, which is quite positive for some track, a bit more difficult on others. But we’ll take the week to analyse and come back stronger in Canada.”
He added: “I think the good points are the strengths we have in some of the tracks which are a bit more slow-speed corners and we struggle a bit little bit more on this kind of track, with longer corners, fast, although we did improve, I think we still lack a little bit.
“Our race pace was definitely better than our quali pace, which is a bit sad, because I think there was a bit more to play today for both of us. Big thanks to the team for keeping on pushing for these three weeks.
“And now we are going to be able to breathe a little bit, analyse what went on, and come back stronger in a race where hopefully we should perform well.”
Ocon remains hopeful that the team can make a step in Canada.
“I think we should be good in in corners in Montreal, we need to see about straight line speed obviously, this is what we need to be sure of. Plenty of work and understanding to go for us.
“But I’m positive that we should be able to come back in a decent level of performance.”
Meanwhile team principal Ayao Komatsu acknowledges that there’s work to be done in all areas.
“I feel like we really need to hit the ground running better, to give a consistent platform for the drivers to run every single run,” he said in Spain. “I don’t like to separate, but for sure we are still learning how to get the best out of Esteban.
“And when he’s in a good spot, in terms of car set-up, mentally and everything, you’ve seen what he can deliver. Shanghai was a very, very good race. Bahrain was amazing. And Monaco, what he delivered in qualifying, was excellent. So we know we can do it.”
Williams missed the points for the first time in five races – but Albon says lessons were learned
Williams enjoyed a remarkable run of four races from Jeddah to Monaco with both cars finishing in the points, helping to put the Grove team into a comfortable fifth place in the F1 World Championship.
That streak ended with a frustrating weekend in Spain, at a track that the team expected to be a little tricky.
Neither driver made Q3, with Alex Albon qualifying a still respectable 11th and Carlos Sainz a frustrated 18th at his home event.
Both men then suffered early front wing damage, necessitating a premature first stop for Albon that put him out of synch with rivals. Later he received more damage in further contact with Liam Lawson, and that led to his retirement. Sainz meanwhile could manage only 14th.
The positive was that all the woe occurred on a weekend when the car was not at its best, and points would have been a struggle.
“I don’t care, put it all be one race,” said Albon when I put that to him. “We’ll get it all done with, and then we’ll move on to Canada!
“In all seriousness, I think as bad as it looks today, there’s some learnings from this weekend. I think we’ve shown that our car is going in the right direction. Q2 and P11 proves that. It shows we still have work to do. We’re not this ultra-midfield car that that’s quick everywhere. We still have our flaws and our weaknesses.
“There’s a clear trend now that pretty much everyone around us is already upgraded, so we will inevitably fall down the pecking order eventually. We need to look at this track and understand why is it always this circuit that hurts us?
“We know it’s long corners, but we need to understand why the long corners. And in the race honestly, I think we could have been fighting for points. Could have, would have, should have.”
Albon insists that there’s always much to be learned from difficult weekends as Williams continues to make progress.
“It might sound weird, but I enjoy coming to these tracks, because I feel like I want us to be a top team,” he said. “And I know that these are the tracks where we need to be better at if we are going to be one.
“So it’s good to take our medicine and to understand it, and to really put the car to the test and understand and look at it, see it visually, quite a lot of work to do here. Let’s really get on top of it.
“We’ve improved the car everywhere, and we’ve definitely improved the car in long corners, but it’s still a step behind some of the others.”
Albon’s Sunday afternoon in Barcelona was made worse by a poor getaway that saw hm swallowed up by those behind, which contributed to the contact with Nico Hulkenberg.
“We had a clutch issue at the start,” he explained. “My clutch drop felt good, and I believe I was on target, but we just had an issue with the clutch. So we lost out quite heavily at the beginning, that cascaded, or put us back on the back foot into Turn 1.
“There was a concertina of cars avoiding each other, and I was the last one to get hit. So I lost my front wing. It forced us on a three-stop because of that, but an early three stop, and then when we had to a front wing change, you do the three-stop without an undercut. So it’s like the worst of everything, everyone’s coming out in front of you.”
Later in the race Albon had a couple of fraught moments with Liam Lawson, one of which earned him a 10-second penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. He was at least able to take it before parking the car, so that it doesn’t carry over to the next event.
“The first penalty incident, I don’t know how I was ever going to make the corner,” he noted.
“For me, it was avoiding action because he was running me out. So I thought, well, he couldn’t complete the move cleanly without pushing me. So I’m entitled to the position. Maybe it might be I might be wrong in that, but that was my feeling towards it. So I thought.
“And anyway, I boxed the next lap, so I got out of his way. Maybe that wasn’t early enough for them. And then we came with Liam later in the race, a bit of a tricky one. I think I tried my best to stay out the way. I think by that point, my tyres were gone. And another front wing.
“A lot of the contacts I was getting were on the side, not just clipping the front, but clipping the end pieces of the floor. And so at that point, the car was pretty badly wounded, and we just decided to stop.”
Montreal is next, and it looks like the type of circuit that should suit the FW47.
“I agree. We’re good on ride, we’re good on a low downforce wing, so that bodes well for us, and we’re generally quite good in low-speed corners.
“Honestly, I think we’re in a good place. I feel like we’re generally understanding the setup of the car well. we’re in a good rhythm with the car. I feel like I’m driving well with the car. You just have to hope that Canada falls towards us as a track layout, and optimise it.
“I think this weekend, if we optimised everything perfectly, we would have maybe got P10. So it was a tricky one. I think in Canada I’m looking more towards Q3 and that kind of race.”
Adam Cooper F1 