Oscar Piastri believes there were no "bad intentions" from his McLaren teammate Lando Norris, who caused the dramatic high-speed Canadian Grand Prix collision between the pair that only boosted the Australian's F1 title hopes.

As George Russell delivered a brilliant pole-to-chequered flag drive to win from Max Verstappen in Montreal on Sunday, Norris crashed out of the race, taking all the blame for banging his car into the back of Piastri as they duelled dramatically for fourth place with just three laps left.

Going for a gap on the inside that wasn't there in a bid to edge past the championship leader, the 320kph collision ended with Norris's car stricken, its front suspension broken, and Piastri's coming off relatively unscathed, so he was able to complete the race in fourth place under the safety car.

Instead, the calamity for a pointless Norris meant Piastri increased his championship lead over his teammate from 10 points to 22. Verstappen is 43 points adrift of the Aussie.

Norris accepted immediately he was in the wrong. "It is all my bad," he said on the team radio. "All my fault. Unlucky. Stupid from me."

Later, he added: "I take full blame and I want to apologise to my whole team and to Oscar for attempting something like that."

The ever-cool Piastri himself shrugged it all off, saying he thought it was a "fair" attempt.

"I don't think there were any bad intentions involved. I think it was just unfortunate really. I will go and have a look, obviously," he added.

"Lando made quite a large move into turn 10. I held my own into the chicane and it was definitely a tough battle, but a clean one up until that point."

A duel like this, and a probable collision, was first predicted back in April by McLaren boss Zak Brown, but Piastri said he hoped they'd still be allowed to go head-to-head again.

With AAP.