How Russell became the Austrian GP hero as Verstappen and Norris came to blows

A Hans Zimmer score and a cinematic masterpiece are often intertwined among some of the most venerated productions in the world of film. The highly revered composer has lent a sprinkling of gold dust to each, enveloping them in a sheen of electronic music-influenced orchestral soundscapes, and has won two Oscars for ‘best original score’ in his distinguished and distinctive career.

Zimmer opened the Austrian Grand Prix with his own energetic rendition of the national anthem Land der Berge, Land am Strome that broke away from the usually staid pre-race formalities. Wielding a James Trussart custom Steelcaster guitar, his involvement ought to have been a harbinger of things to come over the 71 laps of the Red Bull Ring.

And the final 20 laps? Pure cinema. Although the plot lured people into believing that it was set to be a routine Max Verstappen win, a rare Red Bull mistake and the searing pace of Lando Norris on medium tyres culminated in their coalescence at Turn 3: a convergence of plots that changed their fortunes dramatically.

As the camera panned out from their collision, the pair battered and bruised as they limped to the pitlane, George Russell stole past them to stand aloft at the chequered flag. “You couldn’t write a script like this,” the oft-trotted-out cliche rings. Yet, it’s exactly the one you’d pen for a Mercedes redemption arc.

The plot takes time to develop

The scene-setting was lengthy and pedestrian. Verstappen looked set to build upon the foundations dug by his clinical pole lap, one that was head and shoulders clear of the rest. It bore all the usual hallmarks consistent across his collection of 61 GP wins: the preservation of his pole over Norris and subsequent early investment into the second-plus lead needed to stave off the threat of DRS.

Then came the metronomic-yet-prodigious pace over the opening stint. Verstappen slowly tightened his grip on the outcome with a leisurely turn of the vice’s handle. He couldn’t dig out the same 0.4-second advantage per lap that he’d held in qualifying, but it was enough to carry a sub-six second lead into the opening pitstop phase.

Verstappen pulled away at a metronomic pace in the early phases of the race

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Norris matched Verstappen by joining him in the pitlane on the 23rd lap to collect the hard tyres, although the timings were such that the McLaren driver complained that Red Bull had released Verstappen into his path and cost him time. Perhaps there was about a second in it, and Norris’s deficit grew to over six seconds once both drivers had completed their service.

Those arrears continued to expand to just over eight seconds, but Verstappen then started to lose his flow. “I don’t know what’s happening, but suddenly the tyres are really bad,” the Dutchman stated over the radio as he found that his hard tyres were no longer delivering the levels of grip that he expected. His gap held for a short while after, but Norris then began to eat back into the deficit despite reporting that his own rears were starting to move past their prime.

Hot temperatures had exacerbated the high levels of tyre degradation, to which it became apparent that the hard tyres were not impervious. The drivers found them increasingly difficult to manage, particularly as the carcass temperature continued to rise as the stints progressed.

"We probably would’ve had enough to manage it in those final laps, with the delta being about two tenths of a second [without the pitstop delay]"
Christian Horner

The overheating ensured that, when the cloud cover started to emerge, the best of the grip from the hard tyres was gone. Verstappen noted that “the first stint was not too bad and I had a fairly comfortable lead, the second stint was difficult; I think we stayed out a bit too long. And then there was the problem with the pitstop…”

Verstappen had stabilised slightly prior to that, as Norris started to find traffic was hampering his progress. It was becoming a struggle for both; Norris suffered a slip at Turn 3 and went off on a brief excursion into the run-off, while Verstappen reported that his C3 Pirellis were “f*****”. Apparently joined at the hip in their race strategies, Verstappen and Norris peeled into the pitlane together at the end of the 51st tour – and that’s where this motion picture takes a sinister turn.

A sticking left-rear wheelnut on Verstappen’s RB20 was the main culprit. This left Verstappen stationary for 6.5s, an aeon relative to Red Bull’s usual rapidity in the pitlane. With a tentative getaway from his box, he lost about four seconds relative to Norris and opened the door for the Briton to start chomping away at the ever-shrinking gap.

There was a divergence between the Red Bull and the McLaren here, albeit slight: Verstappen had taken a used set of the medium tyre, having not carried a second new set into the race. Norris, on the other hand, had barely worn away the box-fresh lustre from his C4 compound as he wheeled back onto the circuit.

A slow stop for Verstappen, combined with used mediums, allowed Norris to close

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“[Norris] got that new tyre advantage; had they gone out 6s apart, he’d have probably closed the gap,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner reckoned. “We probably would’ve had enough to manage it in those final laps, with the delta being about two tenths of a second.”

In reality, Norris got a 1.8s gap down to less than a second over the next two laps, helped by Verstappen locking up at Turn 4 on his out-lap, and immediately started to pound at Verstappen’s door with the power and intent of a heavyweight boxer. At the start of lap 55, Norris made his first serious attempt into Turn 3 and gathered the draft from the Red Bull ahead, hoping to switch to the inside to plant his McLaren into the apex.

Verstappen covered the middle of the road in retaliation, a move that earned Norris’s ire. He complained over the radio – perhaps with a tinge of drama in his message to appeal to the stewards – that Verstappen had “reacted to his mirrors”, and “saw me move, and then he moved”.

A fearsome tete-a-tete showed few signs of abating. Norris had the speed, but Verstappen supplied the robust defence: one that started to drift back into his old habits of reacting to the movements of the driver behind. For his part, Norris was no saint: sitting on a black-and-white flag for track limits offences, he was pinged for another in his lap 59 tilt at the lead at Turn 3 once more.

This time, Norris had got a nose ahead of Verstappen with a late-braking move down the inside. But he didn’t have the stopping power behind him to cover off the excess speed he’d mounted his challenge with, forcing a lock-up and an escape into the run-off.

That, unless McLaren could do the unlikely and prove that Verstappen had forced him off, was going to encumber him with a 5s penalty. A thrilling battle had now threatened to become an ill-tempered affair.

The quiet hero gets into position

Russell had opened his race through a brief duel with Norris on the way up to Turn 3 but, with only a foot in the game around the outside, a speculative move for second always looked folly. Instead, it proved somewhat costly as the Mercedes driver shed his momentum and allowed his team-mate Lewis Hamilton to break past for third on the third lap.

After the door was slammed in his face at the first attempt, Norris locked up and ran deep at his second Turn 3 effort

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Hamilton’s hold on third lasted for the length of the straight between Turns 3 and 4, as Russell opened his DRS flap and reclaimed the position into the next corner. It had been a somewhat tentative start to the race. Russell felt that his car was acting strangely on his reconnaissance laps to the grid, but a quick scan of the data suggested that all was well.

“We checked everything, and everything was fine, then the pace felt strong,” he reckoned. “I had Lewis attack me early in the race, but then once I got back past him, I got a bit of a gap to Carlos [Sainz].”

Hamilton had dispatched Sainz while going off the road at the first corner and, pending an investigation, was ordered to let the Spaniard through to quell any consequences from the stewards. But the Ferrari, Sainz estimated, was shy of about half a tenth to a tenth of a second to the Mercedes cars, particularly among the early tyre management phases on the mediums. Hamilton could not mount any kind of retaliation, but Sainz was kept just outside of 4s by Russell in the process.

Verstappen kept listing lazily to the left as Norris stood his ground, forcing the contact that ended with Norris’s endplate puncturing the championship leader’s rear-left tyre immediately

Russell’s engineers had elected to offset his heavier fuel load by running on mediums for the opening two stints, and kept that medium going as long as the hard runners did in their middle stint. It was an impressive showing to largely match Sainz’s lap times throughout, even when the mediums started to wear.

Sainz, meanwhile, was coming under threat from Oscar Piastri. The McLaren driver was growing in momentum through the race after a first-lap touch with Charles Leclerc, who had steamed up the inside and left Piastri with little else to do but touch the Ferrari driver’s endplate.

“I didn't get the best of starts, but saw a bit of an opening on the outside and then went nice and late on the brakes,” the Australian recalled. “I couldn't really see where Checo [Sergio Perez] went on the inside, but I didn't think he was really that far up alongside Charles, but obviously all three of us kind of met at the apex. Quite fortunate for myself. I think there was a little bit of damage, but I don't think anything major.”

Having also fallen behind Perez after being nudged wide at Turn 4, Piastri had the bit between his teeth and repaid the favour on the Mexican driver with a brave move around the outside of Turn 6. He banked the knowledge that overtaking was possible there and later used it to dispatch Hamilton when the Mercedes’ tyres had started to fade. Sainz was next in his sights, and began to scythe great chunks out of his advantage as the race waltzed into its final act.

Russell had consolidated his position ahead of Sainz entering the closing stages as Piastri attempted to mount his comeback

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

The story reaches its climax

Verstappen’s defence of the lead started to become more desperate as Norris continued to turn the screw. Further fury washed over Norris when a lap 63 attempt to pass, again at Turn 3, ended with Verstappen going off to preserve the lead. There were shades of the Dutchman’s own move on Leclerc at the same corner in 2019 but, this time, there was no contact.

“He has to give the position back,” Norris contended immediately over the radio. “I was ahead at the apex.”

Ultimately, it was small fry compared to events on the next lap. Norris positioned his car on the outside in a bid to swing around, grab the cut-back, and try to finally clear Verstappen with DRS into the next corner. Instead, Verstappen kept listing lazily to the left as Norris stood his ground, forcing the contact that ended with Norris’s endplate puncturing the championship leader’s rear-left tyre immediately.

Verstappen’s puncture-induced squirm knocked at Norris’s right rear to pull that off the rim too, and the two descended down the hill into Turn 4 in glacial fashion. Victory was gone for both drivers, escaping from their respective grasps at the same time as the air in their deflating tyres.

“I expect a tough battle against Max,” Norris exhaled after the race. “I know what to expect. I expect aggression and pushing the limits and that kind of thing. All three times he's doing stuff which can easily cause an incident. And in a way, it was just a bit reckless – he seemed like a little bit desperate from his side.

“I just expected a tough, fair, respectful on-the-edge bit of racing and I don't feel like that's what I got him into.”

Verstappen denied that he had been moving under braking, and felt that Norris’s manoeuvres had been “dive-bombs” and “hoping that the other guy steers out of it and you make the corner”. Norris ultimately retired, the damage to his car and loss of position too great to continue, while Verstappen made it back to the pits to rejoin in fifth. Regardless, the Red Bull driver was found to be at fault and handed a 10s penalty for his part in the incident.

The damage resulting from his puncture forced Norris into retirement, while Verstappen rejoined to finish fifth

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

It all was so avoidable too. Red Bull did not inform Verstappen that Norris had a 5s penalty: a hubristic oversight that cost a victory. Very un-Red Bull, if you like.

Speaking to Sky after the race, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella reckoned that the “legacy” of Verstappen’s previous incidents in 2021 versus Hamilton in their tempestuous title scrap not being punished enough bore fruit in Austria.

“The problem behind it is that if you don’t address these things honestly, they will come back,” the Italian mused. “They have come back today because they were not addressed properly in the past when there was some fights with Lewis that needed to be punished in a harsher way. You learn now to race in a certain way, which we can consider fair and square.”

The debris produced by the Verstappen/Norris connection yielded a virtual safety car, which allowed him to get the surplus of heat in his hard tyres down to a more manageable level

Russell was now in position to collect the win, although he admitted that he “nearly crashed” when Toto Wolff, caught up in a whirlwind of euphoria, burst onto the radio to tell his driver “George, you can win this” while Russell was in a braking zone. “Just let me f****** drive,” came the curt riposte, and Wolff later admitted that it was a “stupid” time to deliver his rallying cry.

Russell explained that he was told three laps before the collision that a win was still on. Even when he tiptoed past the wayward and erstwhile leading pair, he knew that he still had work to do. Piastri again pressed Turn 6 into service to move past Sainz, and was rapidly homing in on the medium tyres.

“Marcus [Dudley], my engineer, said three laps before, ‘They're fighting really hard and we can win this’. And I said, ‘look, we need to secure P3 first, let me drive’. I knew Oscar was fast behind. And then when I got into the lead, I knew it was going to be a challenging last six laps.”

The debris produced by the Verstappen/Norris connection yielded a virtual safety car, which helped Russell’s cause. This allowed him to get the surplus of heat in his hard tyres down to a more manageable level: crucial, as Piastri was close to getting within two seconds of the Mercedes ahead.

With two laps to go, Russell managed to see off Piastri’s improvements with a final push to the flag, ensuring he was 2.4s clear ahead of the final lap.

Piastri's bid to catch Russell wasn't helped by a virtual safety car to recover debris from the track

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“It's a bit of a strange one to win a race like this,” he pondered after the podium festivities –where he took the honour of drenching Zimmer in champagne. “But it's racing. Sometimes it goes against you and I feel like we've probably missed out on one or two possibilities of victories. Today it went for us, so it's how the cookie crumbles.

“I thought Oscar was going to catch me, to be honest, but I think catching is one thing, overtaking is another. I had Carlos behind me for 10 laps yesterday in my DRS, and I was also behind Carlos for about eight laps in his DRS, and overtaking wasn't straightforward. I just said to myself, ‘Do what you do best, no heroics, and you'll win this race’.”

Russell might not have won an Oscar for his starring role in a brilliant ending, but he certainly beat one to clinch his second F1 victory. And, indicative of the season, a predictable plotline was turned upon its head to deliver a result few could have predicted.

A Verstappen art-house jaunt with little conflict to speak of? No chance. This is starting to turn into an all-action thriller – and there will be more roles for Norris and Russell to play.

Wolff admitted he regretted his ill-timed rallying cry to Russell

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images