Max Verstappen-Lando Norris crash: what happened and who was to blame

Max Verstappen and Lando Norris were caught up in a ding-dong battle for top spot when the championship rivals crashed in an explosive moment in the 2024 season.

Verstappen and Norris collided in dramatic fashion on lap 64 of 71, handing George Russell an unexpected win at the Austrian Grand Prix, and igniting a war of words as the blame game continued after the chequered flag had dropped.

Telegraph Sport dissects the key moments when the duelling pair came together to allow Russell to claim victory from 15 seconds back.

Verstappen’s lead disintegrates

Having dominated the first two thirds of the race, a long middle stint for Verstappen allowed Norris to trim his eight second lead to just over six seconds as the pair pitted for a second time on the same lap.

A slow stop at the end of lap 52 significantly upped the pressure on Verstappen, whose advantage was almost wiped out by a delay in the removal of the left-rear tyre. Norris, following into the pits behind in his McLaren, came out of the pit lane around 50 metres adrift and just two seconds back. Norris’s McLaren, on new mediums and in a slipstream, enabled him to get into Verstappen’s DRS range and pepper him with attacks.

Lap 55 to 63 – Norris makes his moves

On lap 55, Norris is left annoyed, saying Verstappen moved, as he makes the first of several attempts to overtake on Turn 3. By lap 57, there is sign of pressure form Verstappen’s radio as he complains about a lap of grip here. “Like there’s something wrong with the car, man,” he says down the radio.

With 12 laps remaining, Norris again makes his move on the Turn 3 hairpin and this time takes the lead, but he claimed the line by running wide over the run-off so quickly handed the place back. That moment was also Norris’s fourth track limits breach of the race, which put him at risk of a five-second time penalty. The next time they got alongside each other it was Verstappen who stayed ahead by running wide, to Norris’s annoyance.

Lap 64 – they finally come to blows

After repeated battles on Turn 3, this time there is contact on their approach to the hairpin.

Norris had been plotting to overtake on the outside into the uphill right-hander. Verstappen had positioned his car in the middle of the road to defend against Norris, who moved to the outside of the turn.

However, as Norris then moves to overtake, Verstappen closes into his space, with contact appearing to first come between their front tyres that results in a second impact at the rear.

Verstappen’s Red Bull suffers an immediate rear-left tyre failure, but as Norris tries to overtake for the lead – unaware he has suspension damage – Verstappen runs him off the road and onto the grass.

Verstappen and Norris limp back to the pits, with the Dutchman able to continue after stopping for repairs. However, Norris was forced to retire.

Angry recriminations

Stewards would decide that Verstappen was to blame for the incident, giving him a 10-second penalty that combined with his pit-stop dropped him down to fifth. The remarkable flashpoint provided Russell, who was sitting in third place, 15 seconds back, to assume the lead. And the British driver was able to take advantage to land just the second win of his career.

Speaking on the radio later, Verstappen was furious after being informed by his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase that he had been blamed for initiating the contact. “That’s just ridiculous,” Verstappen said. “You can’t just send it left or right. What do you want me to do?”

Verstappen’s Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, echoed the Dutchman’s thoughts. “He didn’t behave,” said Horner. “We were desperately unlucky.”