How Verstappen lost his gap to Norris in the Austrian Grand Prix

Max Verstappen had a perfect start, and was not bothered by Lando Norris for the majority of the race. In fact, the Briton initially had to fend off George Russell's attack before he could even think of attacking Verstappen. By the time Norris had survived the first few corners, Verstappen was already out of DRS distance from the McLaren driver.

Although a lot happened in the race, the battle for victory didn't seem like it was going to even happen. Verstappen drove further away from Norris lap by lap, leaving the McLaren driver more than seven seconds in his wake.

Red Bull's strategic mistake

Halfway through the stint on the hard tyre, Verstappen starts to complain. The hard tyre wasn't as good as Red Bull expected and Verstappen preferred to go pit. However, Red Bull kept Verstappen on the circuit, much to the Dutchman's frustration. Norris is now catching up, although Verstappen kept a considerable margin for a long time.

However, Red Bull keeps Verstappen out because they already felt the problems coming. Red Bull had counted on it being a race with one medium tyre and two hard tyres. Red Bull, therefore, had two sets of hards left. In the race, however, the hard tyre proved not to be as good as hoped and so they had to switch to plan B.

Plan B was to put Verstappen on a used medium tyre versus Lando Norris' fresh medium tyre. Indeed, McLaren did have two fresh sets of the medium tyre left and smelt its chance.

Norris took advantage of Red Bull's blunder

Still, Verstappen had a seven-second lead over Norris when he entered the pit lane. With a normal pit stop, Verstappen, even on older tyres, could probably have managed the gap over Norris. The problem, however, was that Red Bull did not do a proper pitstop, causing Verstappen problems.

The pit stop went wrong on Verstappen's left-rear tyre. That took longer than usual and to make matters worse, they then had to wait for Norris to drive into the pits. As a result, the pit stop took 6.5 seconds. Norris' pit stop lasted only 2.9 seconds, leaving the gap at the exit of the pit lane only 2.9 seconds.

Aware of the predicament, Verstappen knew he had to push flat out. Perhaps that is why he locked up his brakes into turn four. On his mediums, this was obviously a problem. Norris, meanwhile, used his fresh tyres and closed the gap to Verstappen in two laps. Once in the DRS, Norris didn't let up.