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Austrian Grand Prix Takeaways: George Russell Steals Win As Verstappen, Norris Collide

After a late-race incident between the top two drivers in the championship standings, the Mercedes driver took advantage of the carnage.

Zach Koons

Mercedes driver George Russell captured his second career victory on Sunday.
Mercedes driver George Russell captured his second career victory on Sunday. / Eric Bolte-USA TODAY Sports

George Russell probably didn’t fancy his chances to compete for a victory coming into the Austrian Grand Prix, but circumstances can change on a dime in Formula One. That proved to be the case Sunday as the Mercedes driver took advantage of a scrap between the two race leaders, picking up the pieces to earn his second career win.

Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, the two top drivers in the championship standings, collided with less than 10 laps to go while running in first and second, allowing Russell to storm up the road and take the lead. He then held off Norris’s McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri, who came home to finish second and Carlos Sainz, who nabbed Ferrari’s first podium since Monaco.

Russell became the fifth different driver on a fourth different team to win a race in 2024. Here’s what you need to know from a wild and wacky Austrian Grand Prix.

Verstappen and Norris’s Scrap Is Russell’s Gain

The budding battle between the Red Bull and McLaren drivers has been the talk of the paddock in recent weeks as duels in Miami, Imola, Canada and Spain cemented the two as real rivals. Despite those close races, Verstappen and Norris have managed to avoid any major incident and have maintained a positive relationship, on and off the track. Until Austria.

Following a lengthy late-race pit stop, Verstappen led Norris but just over a second with less than 20 laps to go and the McLaren, which had looked a step slower than the Red Bull all weekend, found new life. Norris put the three-time world champion under pressure over and over again at Turn 3 and frustration from both sides began to mount. Finally, on Lap 64, Norris had a look down the outside and Verstappen moved out left, colliding into the McLaren and sending both cars off the track.

The impact was immediate. Both Norris and Verstappen sustained damage. While it appeared the Red Bull took the worst of the exchange initially, it was the McLaren that had a wheel torn to shreds and limped back into the pit lane, only to retire from the race. Verstappen came back out in fifth and picked up a 10-second time penalty for causing the collision (though he and team principal Christian Horner vehemently disagreed on the team radio). Norris, on the other hand, said after the race he would “lose a lot of respect” for Verstappen if the Red Bull driver didn’t admit fault in the collision.

Russell, who was more than 15 seconds down the road at the time, saw his fortunes change instantaneously. Spurred on by an impassioned radio message from usually stoic team principal Toto Wolff (“George, you can win this!”), the 26-year-old Brit stormed to the front but his work wasn’t done. He then kept the quicker McLaren of Piastri at bay and reached the checkered flag first—even if it didn’t settle in right away.

Sure, fortune shined upon Russell on Sunday in a way that couldn’t have been predicted, but the result is a testament to the improvement at Mercedes this season. The team has put itself in position in qualifying the last three weeks, beating out the Ferraris and often trailing only Verstappen and Norris. After the team settled for third in Canada and Spain, Russell won the day and the race, simply by being ready to strike. 

Red Bull’s Mistake Put Verstappen in a Vulnerable Position

Now, for the fallout. 

Verstappen dominated the entire weekend, posting times in qualifying that the rest of the field could only gawk at. He led the race from the start to Lap 64, spending most of that time at least six seconds ahead of Norris and by as much as more than eight seconds. But F1 is unforgiving and a seemingly small, not to mention uncharacteristic, mistake in the pits put the Red Bull driver in a position he never should have found himself in. 

Verstappen and Norris spent the entire afternoon on the same exact strategy, coming in on the same lap on both pre-incident pit stops. Then, on what should have been the Red Bull driver’s final stop of the race, the pit crew struggled to get his left rear tire off, resulting in a delay of more than six seconds. Small margins are everything in F1 and the mistake allowed Norris’s deficit to become less than two seconds, rather than eight. 

The blunder in the pit lane came after Verstappen had complained for laps on end about tire degradation and how the car had, in his estimation, become more difficult to drive. The poor stop only compounded the frustration and something became clear—Verstappen was feeling the pressure. The typically steely, determined Dutch driver has been under threat for the last few weeks and the possibility of Norris beating him has never been higher. That sort of pressure can lead to mistakes, including the one that wrecked the race for both drivers and a penalty for Verstappen.

A Strong Weekend for McLaren Derailed

McLaren needed a statement weekend—ideally in the form of a victory—in Austria and seemed in a position to do so when Norris started putting Verstappen under pressure. But even a second-place finish would have at least kept the team and its lead driver in a better spot going forward. Instead, Norris won’t leave the weekend with much. Just a third-place finish in Saturday’s sprint and another Driver of the Day award (despite being … the only driver who didn’t finish Sunday’s grand prix).

Norris may find himself 12 points farther behind Verstappen than he did coming into the weekend, but McLaren did manage to make up ground in the constructors' standings, due largely to the efforts of Piastri. The Australian driver notched a pair of runner-up finishes in both the sprint and the full-length race, racking up 25 points in total. Piastri proved once again that he may be McLaren’s advantage in the title fight. He’s outpaced Sergio Pérez in each of the last five races, outscoring the Red Bull driver 71–15 in that span. If Piastri can maintain that form, McLaren will continue to cut into Red Bull’s lead and the 23-year-old will see his individual standing soar as well.

Still, Norris’s search for a second career race win will have to wait at least another week. He may not have had the best setup this weekend, but the 24-year-old will leave Austria wondering what could have been for the third race in a row. 

Let’s Talk About Leclerc

What else happened in Austria besides the chaos at the front? Well, plenty, starting with another head-scratching weekend for Ferrari. 

Charles Leclerc got squeezed at the start by Piastri and Pérez, causing damage to his front wing and leading to a first-lap pit stop. But even at that stage, one would expect the much quicker Ferrari to cut through the rest of the field and fight for a finish in the points. Instead, Leclerc became frustrated with his tires early on two separate occasions, when he desperately needed to pull a longer stint out on the track. He stopped three times before the halfway point of the race and the gap to 10th proved to be far too much to overcome. 

Since winning at his home race in Monaco, Leclerc (and Ferrari) have struggled. A DNF in Canada, an uninspiring fifth-place result in Spain and two measly points in the Austrian sprint have seen the Monegasque driver plummet beneath Norris in the drivers' standings. Whatever’s going on at Ferrari needs to change, and fast. McLaren already seems a sure bet to overtake the Prancing Horse, but even Mercedes could enter the fray if things don’t change.

Battling for the Last Few Points

Before the Verstappen–Norris incident, a real fight was developing for finishing spots eight through 10 between members of three teams—Haas, Alpine and RB. Ultimately, all three teams got at least one driver into the points, but it was Haas that emerged victorious on strategy, earning a few extra places due to the front-of-race incident.

Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen finished sixth and eighth respectively, using an early pit stop to gain the track position advantage and nab the team’s best result of the season by far. The two Haas drivers never looked back and never clashed (unlike their counterparts at Alpine) and will leave the weekend having leapfrogged back into seventh in the constructors' standings. Pierre Gasly earned a hard-fought point, though most of the battle seemed to be with teammate Esteban Ocon, rather than drivers on the other teams. Daniel Ricciardo, who was on a more similar strategy to the Hass drivers as opposed to that of Alpine’s, shook off a rough weekend in Spain to finish in ninth and get RB back on track.

As for Aston Martin, Williams and Sauber … well, there’s always next weekend. The season’s first tripleheader concludes next Sunday at the British Grand Prix.

Published |Modified
Zach Koons

ZACH KOONS

Zach Koons is a programming editor at Sports Illustrated who also specializes in Formula One news and analysis. He started as a breaking news writer at SI before joining the programming team in 2023. Also a contributor to NBA and college sports coverage, Zach previously wrote for The Spun and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and currently hosts the Bleav in Northwestern podcast. Zach is a 2020 graduate of Northwestern and lives in New York City.

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