Lando Norris continued putting pressure on Max Verstappen in Austria, engaging in an intense wheel-to-wheel duel with the Red Bull driver. However, it didn’t end well for him, as a puncture forced him to retire. Many deemed Verstappen guilty and while he didn’t publicly acknowledge the same, a radio exchange with his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase shows that the Dutchman made an uncharacteristic mistake following the incident.
After taking Norris out and pitting for new tires, Verstappen came out onto the track in P5 under Virtual Safety Car conditions. There were seven laps to go and the three-time World Champion was on fresh soft tires. As such, he was hoping to make up places.
“Mate my delta’s fuc*ed. I have no power. Hello?” said a frustrated Verstappen to Lambiase. The latter then asked him to hold on, but Verstappen continued to get agitated and was confused as to why his delta was negative.
Lambiase soon revealed that Verstappen had his pit-lane speed limiter on. “Okay VSC ending Max and you had the pit lane speed limiter on. VSC ending.”
Because of this, Verstappen lost four seconds to Hamilton and had to settle for P5. However, finishing ahead wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Apparently Max accidentally switched on his pit-lane speed limiter during yesterday’s race
which is why he lost quite a bit of time during the virtual safety car pic.twitter.com/U4BtCArRbJ
— Verstappen News (@verstappenews) July 1, 2024
Verstappen had a 10-second time penalty because of his incident with Norris. Even if he climbed up to P4 (or higher), the penalty would have pushed him back down to P5.
Max Verstappen was unhappy with the penalty given by the stewards
Unsurprisingly, when Verstappen was told after the race that he had been given a 10-second penalty for causing a collision with Norris, he wasn’t happy.
“That’s just ridiculous,” he said on team radio. “You can just send it left or right. What do you want me to do?”
What’s interesting is that Norris believes the collision to be entirely Max’s fault. During the post-race interviews, the British driver said that he would lose a lot of respect for Verstappen if he didn’t accept his mistake.
Lando Norris and Max Verstappen might have just had their Hamilton/Rosberg moment today based off these post-race interview answers #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/RO5dGXf4Qq
— Douglas Reyes-Ceron (@dreyesceron) June 30, 2024
Whether Norris and Verstappen spoke about that happened in Austria remains unknown. But they do not have a lot of time to let things cool off, as F1 heads to Silverstone this weekend for the 2024 British GP.
