Why was Lando Norris only given a five-second penalty for Oscar Piastri crash?

Lando Norris appeared to get away with a lenient penalty at the Canadian Grand Prix after causing a collision with McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri with four laps remaining.

Norris was attempting to pass Piastri for fourth place when he misjudged the distance to his teammate, clipped the back of the lead McLaren and damaged his own suspension against the pit wall.

The crash saw Norris retire from the race on the spot, with the British driver accepting full blame for the incident during media interviews after the race.

The stewards investigated the collision later on Sunday evening, agreed Norris was fully to blame, but only gave him a five-second penalty — which made no difference to his race result as he was classified 18th, four laps behind the leaders.

The stewards also opted against awarding Norris any penalty points on his super licence for the collision — a decision that is entirely left to the stewards’ own discretion.

Although the incident ended Norris’ race and dropped him out of the points, he appeared to get away lightly for the collision as the stewards’ penalty had no material impact on his result or penalty points quota going forward.

The standard penalty for causing a collision is ten seconds and two penalty points, but the stewards’ statement relating to the Norris incident said their decision had been more lenient because it had not impacted any other driver’s result.

“The Stewards determined that the driver of Car 4 [Norris] was solely to blame for the collision. Because the collision had no immediate and obvious sporting consequence, we imposed a 5 second time post-race time penalty on Car 4,” they said in a statement.

Time penalties for drivers that fail to finish a race are usually converted into grid penalties at the next race, but because Norris completed over 90% of the Canadian Grand Prix, he was officially “classified” in the results. That meant the stewards could only issue a time penalty and not a grid penalty for the next round in Austria.

However, the incident could have a significant impact on Norris’ title hopes after Piastri extended his lead at the top of the standings by 12 points, meaning it now stands at 22 in total.