The friendship between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris appears to have a decent fracture in the wake of the Austrian Grand Prix.
The normally chummy duo came to blows in the dying stages of the race when Verstappen took out Norris on lap 64.
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‘It’s easy to judge from the outside’ | 02:03
Verstappen managed to pit and finish fifth, despite receiving a 10-second penalty for his reckless driving, but Norris retired after limping to the pits in his damaged car.
The McLaren driver didn’t bite his tongue following the race and said he’d lose respect for the Red Bull champion if he wouldn’t accept responsibility for the incident.
“It depends what he says to me,” Norris said.
“If he admits it, OK. If he says ‘I was stupid’ and admits he ran into me and it was reckless then small amount of respect. Maybe.”
Now the tensions between the pair have been further exposed with Red Bull chief adviser Helmut Marko spilling the beans.
Max & Lando’s 14-lap fight ends in tears | 05:07
Speaking about the relationship between the duo, Marko noted the pair didn’t fly out together as they usually do after other Grands Prix.
“Comments from Norris that Max should apologise don’t really help. But they will start talking to each other,” Marko said to OE24.
When asked if they flew together in Verstappen’s jet Marko responded: “No, normally they fly together, but this time they travelled separately. So Max had a quiet return flight,”
Marko, like the rest of the Red Bull garage, sided with the three-time world champion and put the blame on Norris for the incident.
“It was ridiculous how Norris behaved on the radio. But these things happen and I would tick it off as a race incident, although it was rather Norris who was over the line,” he said.
Verstappen and his team took a defensive position and blamed Norris for his aggressive approach.
“It’s easy to see this from the outside and to judge and whatever,” said Verstappen.
“And everyone has their own opinion. He is so late on the brakes with his dive bombs. But it is what it is and it is never nice when you come together.”
He added that he needed to look back and see how it happened.
“We had a bad strategy and bad pit stops so we also created this for ourselves. The car felt weird and it got worse and worse.”
Sky Sports analyst Anthony Davidson however said there was no doubt that Verstappen was at fault for not giving Norris enough room and moving in the braking zone going into a corner, which is against the rules.
“Moving on the braking zone, guilty as charged as I’m concerned,” Davidson said of the first close call on lap 55.
“That was really risky. We’ve seen Max in the past get hit in the back by his own teammate Daniel Ricciardo, Baku (Azerbaijan GP in 2018) springs to mind straight away.
“He’s very lucky to avoid contact there. Lando did really well to avoid it. There was definite moving in the braking zone. As Andrea Stella said, that’s not allowed in the rules. They wrote that rule because of Max. It doesn’t get more clear than that.”
The Formula 1 grid will be back in action this weekend with the British Grand Prix.
