{"id":222717,"date":"2025-10-18T17:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T17:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222717\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T17:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T17:36:10","slug":"both-mclaren-drivers-involved-in-united-states-gp-sprint-crash-amid-dramatic-start-to-austin-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222717\/","title":{"rendered":"Both McLaren drivers involved in United States GP sprint crash amid dramatic start to Austin weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025 Unites States Grand Prix sprint race opened with immediate drama as both McLaren<\/a> drivers were caught in contact at the very first corner of the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen<\/a> started from pole with a strong launch, defending the inside of Turn 1 as the cars accelerated up the hill from the startline. But as the cars clumped under braking, Oscar Piastri<\/a> and Lando Norris<\/a> made contact at the apex after Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg<\/a> hit the championship leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Someone just wiped me out, I’m out,” Norris said, unaware that it was his own team-mate who hit him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Piastri tried to tuck underneath Norris but goes up on two wheels after hitting Hulkenberg,” Martin Brundle<\/a> said during the Sky Sports F1 broadcast. “It’s a first corner drama.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown was quickly asked to comment, with him swiftly diverting any blame away from his drivers.<\/p>\n

“That was terrible. Neither of our drivers to blame there,” he told\u00a0Sky Sports F1.<\/p>\n

“That’s some amateur-hour driving by some drivers up there at the front, (they) whacked out two guys.<\/p>\n

“I want to see the replay again but clearly Nico Hulkenberg drove into Oscar and he had no business being where he was, he went into his left-rear tyre.<\/p>\n

“It looks like it was just limited to suspension damage, so hopefully it’s relatively easy to fix.”<\/p>\n

Both McLaren drivers, as well as Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso<\/a>, who was also caught up in the drama at Turn 1, were forced to exit the race as yellow flags were waved while track marshals cleared up the resulting debris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren crash<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“McLaren will now learn nothing about tyre degradation, ride height and skid blocks,” Brundle added. “All things you could do with learning for tomorrow’s race.”<\/p>\n

With just four hours until qualifying for the grand prix, the race is on to make sure these cars are repaired and ready to go again this busy weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 Unites States Grand Prix sprint race opened with immediate drama as both McLaren drivers were caught…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[106867,49,48,98681,578,576,577,591,590,592,82,4962,102377],"class_list":["post-222717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-both-mclaren-drivers-involved-in-united-states-gp-sprint-crash-amid-dramatic-start-to-austin-weekend","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam","tag-united-states-gp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}