Ricciardo message Lando still can’t hide from... and Piastri doubt he must silence now
If you want to trace the origins of Lando Norris’s championship-contending Formula 1 career, look no further than the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix.
The Red Bull Ring has always been a strong track for Norris. Not only is it the scene of his maiden podium, but he also has a formidable track record against his teammates at this circuit — he has a 9-1 head-to-head advantage in all qualifying formats, and he’s never been beaten in a grand prix when he’s seen the chequered flag.
Austria is also indelibly linked to McLaren’s modern resurgence. This was the first circuit to which the team brought its first tranche of major car upgrades in 2023, with which Norris — who had exclusive use of the new parts — duly delivered a competitive fourth place, comfortably the team’s best finish of the season up to that point.
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That upgrade set up the Briton and eventually teammate Oscar Piastri on a podium run that would raise expectations for a championship assault in 2024.
By last year’s Austrian Grand Prix there was a quiet and growing belief that McLaren could beat Red Bull Racing to the championship — and that maybe, if the circumstances were right, Norris could take on Max Verstappen for individual honours.
So it was deeply symbolic last year when, with 18 laps to go, Norris found himself directly behind the Dutchman and in with a shot for a victory that could have given the season an entirely new dimension.
It had taken a botched pit stop from Red Bull Racing to get him there, but McLaren genuinely had pace in the final stint to challenge, and lap after lap Norris poked and prodded Verstappen’s defences looking for a way through.
He would never find one, however, and on lap 64 of 71 they collided at turn 3. Both picked up punctures. Verstappen pitted to finish fifth, but Norris sustained too much damage from the rushed limp back to pit lane and retired.
We weren’t to know it then, but it was an incident that would prove fundamental to the context of the next 12 months of racing.
Norris and Verstappen have raced each other several times since then, but rare has the Briton come away with a clean victory without a considerable car advantage. Verstappen has either beaten him outright, forced him into a mistake or slowed him so considerably that it’s cost him later in the race.
The Austria incident and the skirmishes that followed have hung over Norris’s ever since.
Combined this year with his qualifying struggles and now his clumsy crash with Piastri in Canada, it’s amounted to a dark cloud overshadowing the Briton’s title credibility.
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AUSTRIA DIDN’T MAKE NORRIS
The turn 3 incident should have been the making of Norris. While Verstappen stepped beyond the boundaries of reasonable racing — and he was penalised for it — he laid down a marker: ‘I won’t be overtaken easily’.
Remarkably there was a parallel with Charles Leclerc at the same corner five years earlier. Leclerc had been battling Verstappen for victory at that turn when he was ushered off the road on exit in a move he felt was illegal by precedent.
But the stewards deemed it legal, and in a battle with the Dutchman at the following round in Silverstone he put that lesson into practice, banging and barging his way through to a place on the podium. He also used the new standard to get his elbows out at the Italian Grand Prix to defeat Lewis Hamilton and claim Ferrari’s first home victory in almost a decade.
“It doesn’t necessarily maybe change the way you race him,” Daniel Ricciardo said at the time, dissecting the Norris-Verstappen crash and its fallout. “You just know you’re going to have to pull off a really good move and make it stick.
“I think Lando learned that on Saturday.
“He thought he probably had it done, and Max said, ‘No, not today’. You live and you learn.
“No-one in this sport wants to be the one that gets bullied,” Ricciardo said. “You want to stand your ground against everyone.
“Obviously it’s your reputation as well. When people come up to you on track, you don’t want them to think, ‘Oh this guy’s going to be an easy one for me.’
“You always want to have your elbows out to an extent.”
Norris, however, doesn’t appear to have grown in the same way as Leclerc from a similar experience.
If anything, it’s had the opposite effect. With few exceptions Verstappen has had his number whenever they’ve met on track.
It set the tone rather than set up the rivalry, and one year on it’s influencing the way the Briton battles not just with Verstappen but with all his key title rivals.
THE KEY WEAKNESS HOLDING HIM BACK
Increasingly in the last 12 months Norris’s racing style has been derided as blunt and repetitive. No-one doubts his speed in race conditions or in qualifying — regardless of his Q3 struggles — but when it comes to passing cars interested in putting up a stern defence, his progress inevitably slows.
In that respect Miami was a typical race.
He’d qualified second alongside pole-getter Verstappen but was bullied — albeit somewhat incidentally — into a mistake that dropped him back into the pack.
When he eventually caught back up to the reigning world champion, the Dutchman was motivated to fight hard at a time it wasn’t yet clear how much his Red Bull Racing car was lacking.
Norris’s attempts to get through were ineffective, and not for the first time he was forced into an off-track pass — though unlike in Austin last season, he gave the position back rather than copping a penalty.
He eventually broke past, but only after his car advantage had become more significant as Verstappen’s car wore down its tyres.
By then, however, Piastri was through to the lead, the Australian having had time to build a crucial buffer because he’d been decisive in making a move on Verstappen.
Piastri didn’t waste time with Norris’s scattergun approach despite his faster car; he bided his time, assessed his chances and forced Verstappen into opening the door.
This built on Piastri forcing Verstappen into making a mistake off the line in Saudi Arabia, where the Australian got the better start to claim the first chicane.
It’s the comparison with Piastri that’s now hurting Norris most acutely, and he did himself no favours by rear-ending his teammate in Canada.
He’d had a genuinely good race after yet another qualifying flop. He was arguably the faster McLaren driver all weekend, and by the time he caught up to the back of Piastri, then running fourth, he had all the momentum.
But he could not find a way past.
His late-braking move at the hairpin was excellent, but Piastri got him on the switchback down the back straight to claim the final chicane.
That’s when Norris went for his ill-fated lunge for the inside line on the run down to the first turn despite no gap existing.
Why he went for the move — through urgency given Piastri was back inside Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s DRS or desperation for having revealed his hand at the hairpin — is to some extent irrelevant.
Once again his racecraft had been shown up, this time in as direct a comparison as you can get with his teammate.
NORRIS’S BEST CHANCE TO BOUNCE BACK
It’s important to emphasise that Norris’s racecraft isn’t bad. He hasn’t got to where he is by being slapdash on Sundays, and his reputation as a potential champion is warranted based on his pace alone.
But in the harsh spotlight of the frontrunning battle he’s been found wanting relative to the likes of Verstappen and now Piastri, and it’s a deficit that’s proving crucial.
He can’t hope to win the title if he can’t outrace his two biggest rivals.
Now at his lowest ebb, this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix shapes up as a crucial chance for him to bounce back and begin banishing some of the demons he’s allowed to accumulate around him.
His record in Austria is formidable., and despite his growing points deficit, it’s important also to emphasise that at several races he’s been at least as fast as Piastri, if not faster, before some mistake of his own making has opened to the door to a reversal in the McLaren balance of power.
That was the case in both Miami and Canada, to name just two, and they’ve proved seminal to his season narrative.
It would be particularly meaningful given Piastri is in good form at the top of the championship standings and given Verstappen is coming off a steadying and well-executed second place, moving past the controversy of his deliberate crash in Spain.
Verstappen also typically does well at the Red Bull Racing, where he’s a five-time winner.
It means to win this weekend, Norris will likely have to overcome the two biggest thorns in his side: his teammate, Piastri, and his arch rival, Verstappen.
It would give him crucial momentum for his home British Grand Prix on the following weekend.
And, more importantly, it would be a considerable boost to his championship hopes, going some way to rebuilding belief in his potential to fight for a championship in Formula 1.
He may not get a better chance than this.
And if he can’t take it, he may not deserve another one.