Lando Norris identifies 'number one priority' after crunch McLaren Oscar Piastri talks

Lando Norris has identified McLaren's "number one priority" as preserving the team morale after admitting accountability for the Oscar Piastri collision in Singapore.

Ahead of the United States GP, Norris explained that it was "fair" for McLaren to have apportioned blame to him for the incident at Turn 2 in which he collided with Piastri to muscle his way past and into third place.

The contact was actually caused by Norris being tipped wide after clipping the rear of Max Verstappen's car and into Piastri, who was irate over the radio at his team-mate passing him in such a manner, and felt the contact breached the so-called Papaya Rules in place.

Explaining further after admitting accountability, Norris explained how team principal Andrea Stella's main target was to preserve McLaren's working environment, that has transformed it from also-rans to world champions in less than two years.

"Whatever it is, I think sometimes repercussions are not positive," Norris explained to media, including RacingNews365.

"It is clear that the interest for Andrea [Stella] is preserving the position on teamwork that we have, and that teamwork has allowed us to go from being last on the grid a few years ago to being the best performing team and having two drivers who challenge each other more than any team on the grid.

"When you're fighting for wins between those two drivers, of course, you are going to have trickier moments, but the reason we've been able to deal with things well on both sides is because of Andrea's leadership. 

"I don't know what happened to teams in the past, and what Lewis [Hamilton] and [Nico] Rosberg had, but Andrea's number one priority is preserving the morale and the framework that we set out.

"I have been a part of it for many years, but especially since Andrea stepped into his position of being team principal and how he wants to preserve the greatness in the team that we have at the minute."