Lando Norris explains double apology to Franco Colapinto after heavy Azerbaijan GP criticism

Lando Norris has explained why he apologised both privately and publicly to Franco Colapinto after criticising the Alpine Formula 1 driver after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. 

Reigning world champion Norris said Colapinto should be banned for causing a multi-car accident when he locked up at a safety car restart in Baku and slid into Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly, who then hit McLaren’s Norris. All three drivers were wiped out of the race. 

Norris was subjected to online abuse in the wake of his scathing comments about Colapinto, including claiming the Argentine “shouldn’t be in F1”. Colapinto will serve a five-place grid penalty for the incident at this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. 

Speaking to media on Thursday, Norris revealed he first apologised to Colapinto directly before taking to social media to issue a public statement. 

"It was more for the wider audience, I would say. I said what I wanted to, to Franco, and he's the only one really that I need to share my opinion and share my apology with,” Norris explained in Sepang. 

"I don't need to do it on social media, and I don't think you need to use social media to make an apology. But at the same time, there was a lot of noise in the background, so I thought it was sensible to show publicly that I had apologised.

"I accepted that I was wrong. I'm generally the same with my driving, to accept when I've done something wrong or accept something I've not.

"But because it was something I said on TV, I thought it was fair that I shared it with everyone, because they all saw it. I didn't think it was a true value of how I hold myself. At the same time, I still see social media at times and saw some bits, some not so good, some better.”

While he acknowledged passionate fanbases is a part of every sport, Norris insisted there is no place for abuse. 

"Sadly that's what we have to deal with - a lot of sports deal with it, which some of it is down to passion, which you have in sport and you see more of it because on social media it's easy to share your opinions,” he added. 

"And to a certain extend I respect it [passion] but to the extent of online abuse, death threats - all those things are far beyond being a fan of a sport or a driver or a person.

"There's a line. It's not new. It's something that has been around every sport for a long time and highlights that social media platforms and sports need to do more to stop this kind of stuff from happening."