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Lando Norris and Max Verstappen have each had their say on their dramatic late-race collision while battling for the lead of the Austrian Grand Prix, with an unhappy Norris suggesting that it is down to Verstappen to approach him in terms of discussing the incident.
After Red Bull suffered a rare slow pit stop when Verstappen made his final planned visit to the pits on Lap 52 of 71, the Dutchman’s lead from Norris was cut to less than two seconds, enabling the McLaren to continue to close in during the subsequent laps.
Norris made several attempts to overtake before tensions boiled over on Lap 64 as the pair made contact into Turn 3, resulting in both picking up punctures and having to return to the pits.
While Norris had sustained too much damage to continue, Verstappen rejoined the race but was handed a 10-second time penalty for causing the incident. Despite this, he was able to retain his position of fifth, having built enough of a gap from sixth-placed Nico Hulkenberg.
Reflecting on a race in which he had displayed impressive pace before the contact with Verstappen, Norris could not hide his disappointment as he explained: “I thought it was a good race until then.
2024 Austrian Grand Prix: High drama as Norris and Verstappen collide after titanic battle for the lead
“Clearly a little bit on the back foot in terms of overall pace comparing to Max, the first and second stint he would always just edge away that little bit. But they just seemed to make a lot more mistakes than what we did.
“They messed up their pit stop which is rare from them, but clearly a bit of pressure from their side and they started to slip up a little bit. But I felt like I drove a good race. I kept myself in the fight the whole time.
“It was easy to make mistakes but difficult to drive because of the windy conditions and things like that. I just feel let down. A lot of damage on the car, the car’s completely destroyed now so… Yeah, a shame. I don’t know.
“You want to keep driving, and if I got back to the pits in a better way I could have probably gone out and got some points, but the car was too badly broken. I don’t know what I’m meant to say. I did all I could, I gave a fair, respectful, on-the-edge battle, but that’s not what I got in return.”
Norris and Verstappen have long been known to share a good relationship off-track but, when asked if the incident is something that the two of them would talk about, Norris laid the blame firmly at his rival’s door.
“It’s not for me to say, it’s for him to say something,” he responded. “I did nothing wrong – he was the one in the wrong, so he’s the one that should say something, not me.”
‘I did nothing wrong, he’s the one in the wrong’ – Norris gives his view of race-ending clash with Verstappen
Verstappen, meanwhile, also gave his take on what happened and stated that he would need to review the collision again.
“It’s of course unfortunate, stuff that you don’t want to see happening – it’s as simple as that,” the world champion commented. “Of course I will look back at it, because at the moment it’s easy to say stuff.
“I think it’s just better to look back at the footage of what exactly went wrong, because it was a bit of, I would say, an awkward angle that we touched, something that was very weird. Also for both of us that we had a puncture with it, it was really bad.
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“But we also did so many things wrong throughout the race that we put ourselves in a position like that, so there was also things that we have to improve.”
From Verstappen’s perspective, the incident is something that he believes will be discussed between himself and Norris, but he admitted that now is not the time for this to happen.
“Of course we will talk about it,” he added. “At the moment I think it’s not the right point, it’s better to just let things cool off I think ideally. But besides that, I’m more annoyed also with just how the performance of the race was, the mistakes that we made that normally we don’t make.”
Verstappen will speak to Norris about Lap 64 clash but will ‘let things cool off’ first
