The 2024 Austrian Grand Prix will be remembered for the contact between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris that took them out of contention for the victory. The Dutchman ultimately finished P5, with Norris retiring.
Speaking in his post-race written media session, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted that contact between the pair felt like it would happen at some stage.
Verstappen and Norris already had three battles at turn 3, before the fourth one resulted in the collision. The Red Bull driver was slapped with a 10-second penalty for moving under braking and causing that contact.
Horner believes it was a racing incident.
“I think it’s inevitable how close they’ve been racing the last weeks.
“It’s a shame, Lando was already on four strikes, I think he was probably going to get a five second penalty anyway.
“It was a racing incident, I thought it was a bit harsh that Max got a 10-second penalty.”
Norris had made several complaints over the radio about Verstappen moving under braking and believing a big crash was coming if it continued. Ultimately, contact was made on lap 64.
Horner believes Norris was looking to make up for the Sprint and his costly mistake. After passing Verstappen at turn 3, the Dutchman sent it back down the inside at turn 4 despite the Brit having DRS. It allowed Oscar Piastri to come through as well.
“I think Max is a hard racer, and they know that, I think Lando was trying to make up for yesterday, and it was inevitable that you could see this building perhaps for a couple of races, at some point there was going to be something close between the two of them.
“He was getting his elbows out, it’s two tough racers. It’s probably a bit of a hangover from yesterday. Max passed him without DRS down into Turn 4, and then he got mugged by his teammate, so there was probably a bit of a hangover from that.”
The Red Bull team principal is sure they will sort things out and have an open discussion on things.
“Maybe they won’t play paddle tomorrow, but I’m sure they’ll talk about it, they’re two hard racers, they’ll talk about things openly, I’ve got no doubt about that.”
For 50 laps, Verstappen looked in command of the Grand Prix, holding a comfortable lead of around 7s before his final stop.
However, things went wrong from there. He had a slow second stop, with the left rear slow in coming off. The 26-year-old also had to be held as Norris boxed at the same time.
The gap was down to 3s and Norris got into the DRS of the Red Bull within two laps as he used his new mediums to ignite the race.
Horner says Norris would have caught Verstappen anyway, but it would have been easier for the Dutchman to hold on with just a few laps to go. Instead, it was relentless attacks from lap 55 to lap 64.
“Well the first part of the race was going very well, we pulled out a six second gap in the first stint, on the medium tyre everything was under control.
“On the hard tyre the temperatures with the cloud cover were a bit lower, so the hard tyre became the non-preferred tyre, but we still got up to an eight second lead at one point, by the time they’d gone through the traffic it was about six and a half.
“We then pitted on the same lap as McLaren and there was a sticking left rear nut, and the gunman just had to go on it twice. So I think we lost, it was a six-second stop, we lost four seconds, and that then put Lando on a fresh set of mediums versus a scrub set for Max.
“He got that new tyre advantage that had they gone out six seconds apart, he’d have probably closed the gap, but I think we’d have had enough to manage it in those final laps, with the delta being about two tenths of a second.”
At Imola and at the Spanish GP, Norris chased down Verstappen in the closing stint, although he held off the Brit on both occasions. It happened again on Sunday at the Red Bull Ring.
Horner denied that it’s an issue, believing new mediums versus a few lap old ones for Verstappen made the difference.
Although Norris would be handed a penalty for track limit violations, Red Bull did not inform Verstappen of that.
“No, I think that was tyre offset, because in the first and second stint we were absolutely fine, and particularly at the end of the stint, so that then puts Lando in the slipstream, he went off, he got a black and white flag, he then went up the inside of Max and went off, so it was a fourth strike that went to the stewards. And the likelihood was he was going to get a penalty, and I think he knew that.
“And then the incident in turn three, to me, when I looked at the replay, it looked like six of one, half a dozen of the other, both racing hard.”
