Lando Norris said he regretted letting his team down and admitted he was at fault for a collision with McLaren Formula 1 team-mate Oscar Piastri, which saw the Brit crash out of the Canadian Grand Prix.
In a desperate attempt to squeeze past the F1 championship leader on lap 67, Norris got it all wrong and simply ran out of room, sticking his McLaren into the wall.
There were no complaints from Norris, just an apology before he trudged back to the team’s garage – and the incident now leaves him 22 points behind his rival in the F1 standings.
“I'm sorry,” he said over team radio. “All my bad. All my fault. Stupid from me."
He later doubled down on his self-criticism, saying: "I let them down like this and when I make a fool of myself in a moment like today, I have a lot of regret."
It was the culmination of a fight for fourth place and, despite suffering damage, Piastri was able to hold on to the position.
Speaking after the race, Norris explained his decision to take the inside line on the start-finish straight, stating he felt Piastri had left enough room at the time before slowly closing the door.
"I don't expect to pass Oscar on the outside into Turn 1," Norris said. "I should never have gone for it, I guess, in complete hindsight.
"I thought he was starting to drift a little bit to the right, so I thought I had a small opportunity to go to the left. But it was way too much risk, especially on my team-mate. So, happy nothing happened to him, and I paid the price for my mistake."
Norris added that it was important for him to own up to the incident, expressing his remorse that he'd "let down my team" and was planning to apologise to the rest of the McLaren staff.
He denied that the move came out of frustration that McLaren had endured its most muted performance this season, in which neither driver graced the podium for the first time in 2025.
"Our rule number one is to not make contact with your team-mate and it's what I did. McLaren is my family. I race for them, you know, every single weekend.
"I try and do well for them, more than I often try and do well for myself...
"That's for me always the worst feeling. So, of course, I only really need to apologise to all of them and Oscar as well.
"He's not going to be happy altogether with what happened. I wouldn't be either if it was the other way around, you know. So, again, I owe him an apology for taking such a risk. He raced me fairly until that point and close and that's what you want.
"I think we didn't have the pace for pole yesterday. Oscar did a good job and good lap to get P3. Today we were probably quicker than we were expecting, I would say, which is a big positive for us.
"Our race pace was very strong and I felt like quite easily the quickest on track. So, it doesn't really matter in the end of the day when I crash. But, yes, I think we clearly always struggled more in qualifying this season than we have in the race.
"I think that showed again this weekend. So, yes, it's quite obvious to us that our weakness is qualifying at the minute as a team, of course, myself too. And that's what we've got to work on."
McLaren will now start an immediate debrief. McLaren CEO, Zak Brown, previously maintained that he knew there would come a time when his drivers would make contact in the title fight.
