F1 News: Charles Leclerc on his incident with Norris - "He paid the price"

Leclerc discusses his incident with Norris.

Leclerc has discussed his early contact with Lando Norris in an incident which proved costly for the Monegasque's race.

The Brazilian GP was chaotic from start to finish, with Daniel Ricciardo and Kevin Magnussen bringing out an early Safety Car after their early contact. 

As Formula 1 has shown historically, Safety Cars often create more incidents - and the closed-up grid facilitated several incidents after the restart. 

One of these was between Leclerc and Norris, who made contact as they went side-by-side into the middle sector.

Leclerc was sent into the wall with this collision, though he was able to recover into the pits and take a respectable 4th place finish to conclude a difficult weekend at Interlagos. 

The 25-year-old spoke to the media about the incident post-race, explaining his surprise at Norris's aggressiveness:

"Obviously, I know that he is not this type of guy, but for some reason today he was aggressive, and also yesterday, the same with Carlos. 

"I don't really understand, but it's like this. At the end, I didn't expect him to let me past - he didn't, but today was too much.

"All in all, with my performance, I'm happy. Towards the end, we had good pace, and we finished P4, which is a great result overall.

"After that contact, I had a tough race, but we were able to make a good comeback.

"The pace was good, albeit not on the Mercedes' [level] weekend. 

"I'll try to be in a better spot at Abu Dhabi. Honestly, it was a frustrating weekend, especially after what happened on the first lap."

Leclerc and Norris generally avoid incidents when battling wheel-to-wheel, so it was a surprise to see the two drivers tangle in Brazil. 

Norris was eventually handed a 5-second time penalty for his incident before his eventual retirement after suffering a mechanical failure.