Not just the accident
The 2024 edition of the Austrian Grand Prix will go down in the history books especially for the Max Verstappen and Lando Norris clashprotagonists of a controversial accident that put an end to a spectacular duel for first place between the reigning world champion – who then finished fifth – and his main challenger in this championship, who instead came off worse and had to retire from the race.
The incident with his friend-rival was not the only topic covered by the Dutchman in the ritual post-race interviews. With the journalists present in Austria, in fact, Verstappen seemed to want to talk about some imperfections committed by his team rather than about the episode in which he was the protagonist with Norris.which he said were the starting point of the missed victory. Live coverage showed how the second pit stop, which lasted over six seconds, threw the Red Bull #1 into the clutches of the McLaren, giving rise to the duel that ended in an accident.
Wrong pit stops and more
“Everything was terrible. Everything was wrong. – commented Verstappen, showing his usual, implacable severity towards his team – I mean, I struggled with all the tires. There were a lot of problems, especially with the pit stops. Everything went wrong.“What the three-time world champion did not seem to dispute – at least explicitly – was the race strategy, but only because he reported having had problems with all sets of tyres, regardless of the compound.
“I don’t think we did the right or wrong thing with the tires. My balance at the beginning wasn’t that bad. But then, I don’t know why, the car started to get worse and worse as the race went on. So this is also an aspect that we need to examine.”he concluded. Even at Sky Sports F1 #1 Orange had expressed similar concepts, highlighting how “we brought him closer [Norris] because we made bad decisions and there were bad pit stops“.
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