Lando Norris makes Oscar Piastri crash warning after ‘surprise’ Italian GP admission

Lando Norris suggested he was “one metre” from crashing into his team-mate after a daring overtake from Oscar Piastri at Monza.

The Australian dived down the inside of Norris into Turn 4 to take the lead of the race and ultimately stay ahead of his McLaren team-mate, even if he did not achieve the victory.

Lando Norris suggests risky move by team-mate Oscar Piastri

Aside from Charles Leclerc, who produced a tyre masterclass to pull off the one-stop, Piastri was the fastest driver on the grid, finishing second ahead of his team-mate and polesitter Norris.

But Norris hinted at frustration from his side that his team-mate attempted such a move, suggesting he was caught out by it and if he had braked one millimetre later they would have crashed.

“I don’t know what I should have done differently,” he said. “If I brake one metre later, we probably would have crashed. So something we’ll look at.

“But, I mean, Ferrari just drove a better race today, especially Charles, he did a very good job. So just hats off to him.”

As for if a one-stop was possible for him, Norris said they contemplated it but did not think it was realistic.

“We considered it the whole race but it was not possible with the amount of graining that I had,” he said. “We knew it would be tight, but just with our car and some of the limitations we have, it wasn’t possible today.”

Piastri meanwhile said it “hurt” to not be able to catch Leclerc late on.

“It hurts, I’m not going to lie, it hurts a lot,” the Australian said. “Did a lot of things right today. There were a lot of question marks on the strategy going into the race from the position we were in, with the tyres looking like they did, doing a one stop seemed like a very risky goal, and it was right.”

As for whether they should have tried the one stop, Piastri said “everyone’s a legend on Monday.”

“In hindsight, yes, but everyone’s a legend on Monday after the race,” he said. “And today, unfortunately, we got it a bit wrong.

“We had everything to lose from being in the lead of the race. Charles could try something a bit different.

“The mediums were getting destroyed and even the hards on the Red Bull at the start looked pretty dead and my front left was pretty heavily grained, just we didn’t expect it to clear back up again which it did.”

Read next: Revealed: What shocked Oscar Piastri said to Charles Leclerc in Monza cooldown room