Red Bull Racing
Max Verstappen escaped a late clash with 2024 FIA Formula One World Championship title rival Lando Norris to claim fifth place at the 2024 Formula 1 Austrian GP around the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg on Sunday.
The Dutchman recovered to score 10 points, which extended his title lead over the McLaren driver to 81 points. Oracle Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Pérez finished in seventh place.
Max Verstappen, Driver, Red Bull Racing
We were battling today, and Lando tried to move around the outside, and then we touched with the rear tyres. It was very hot, so immediately, we had a puncture. From my side, it seemed like a weird move, but we obviously need to review this, and of course, we will talk about it. The shape of the corner also causes these kinds of issues sometimes, and it is never nice to come together. However, this isn’t my main focus, as we need to look at the overall performance today and the difficulties we had with the car. It was very hard to manage the tyres, 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 issue with the pit stop. The overall Team performance wasn’t what we expected, and the strategy didn’t work well in this case. It was a shame because of the lead that we had. There are definitely a few things we need to improve looking to next week, and hopefully, we can work on the performance, tyres and balance.
Sergio Pérez, Driver, Red Bull Racing:
It is very disappointing to be in this position today. The race started really well, and we had a solid start, but then I picked up some damage on Lap 1, and the car struggled and was sliding, so it was very difficult to fight towards the front. With the damage, I was off balance and made a mistake going into the pitlane and got a five-second time penalty, which hindered us towards the end of the race. We need to look back at a few things and carefully analyse them. The race pace was a question mark today, and I felt we made some really good improvements after yesterday. Overall we lacked performance, it was a very difficult race and one that I struggled a lot in. Next weekend I hope we can have a solid, clean showing, and hopefully will be able to sort all of the problems from this weekend to be able to move forwards as there are still a lot of races left. On to Silverstone.
CHRISTIAN HORNER, CEO and Team Principal
For so much of the race, we had it under control; we had an eight-second lead, and it looked like it was all ok. We lost some time at the pit stop as we had a wheel nut stuck on the left rear, which cut Max’s lead down more than we would have liked, and from there, it was hard racing. Lando exceeded track limits and was going to get a penalty but then there was the contact and that was really frustrating, it was tough racing between those two. We’ve still managed to get some points and extend both Championships, 10 points in the Drivers and 16 in the Constructors. The pace of the car has been very strong this weekend; we have had two poles, Max led the race for all but nine laps, and then the Sprint victory yesterday, so it hasn’t been totally disastrous, but yes, it is still frustrating, we really would have liked the win, but that is racing.
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