This year’s first true on-track dogfight between McLaren team mates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri last time out in Canada did not end well.
Piastri was the beneficiary of the clash, increasing his championship lead to 22 points thanks to his team mate’s failure to score.
Norris admitted he had committed a grave error at the moment his car came to a rest after contact with the pit wall barrier. Now he must show the resilience needed to put the misjudgement behind him and take crucial points out of Piastri’s advantage at the Red Bull Ring.
Here are the talking points for the Austrian Grand Prix…
Norris need to fight back
Over the opening ten rounds of the championship in 2025, there’s been no question of which team has boasted the strongest overall package on the grid: McLaren.
But despite sharing seven grand prix victories, six pole positions and 16 podium finishes between them over the opening half of the season, Piastri and Norris were yet to have a meaningful on-track battle until the last race.
For multiple laps, Piastri successfully held off his more experienced team mate as Norris looked to take his fourth place from him. But with just four laps remaining, Norris tried to stick to draw alongside the other McLaren to claim the inside line for the first corner. But a critical misjudgement from last year’s championship runner-up saw him instead drive into the back of his team mate.
The only saving grace for Norris was that he retired and Piastri continued. Norris took full responsibility for the incident, immediately apologising to Piastri in the paddock after the race.
Piastri was gracious in accepting the apology, although there was little reason for him to be upset given how much the clash benefited him in the championship. Although Piastri finished off the podium in a frustrating weekend for McLaren, the championship leader still arrives in Austria this week with a 22-point advantage over his team mate.
McLaren and Norris will both be eager to bounce back at the Red Bull Ring. But last year’s Austrian Grand Prix was one of the most frustrating weekends of the season for the Woking team.
Norris lost a potential victory after a controversial clash with Verstappen in the later stages of the grand prix. Piastri was left ruing the loss of what could have been his first grand prix victory after his best qualifying time was deleted by the stewards, dropping him from a potential third on the grid to seventh. He finished the race second behind winner Russell, who picked up the lead after Verstappen and Norris’s late race skirmish.
Verstappen and Russell to resume their rivalry?
Max Verstappen’s quest to defend his title for a fourth consecutive season is proving to be the most challenging of his F1 career. Facing up against a two-pronged McLaren attack in Piastri and Norris, the Red Bull driver is in the rare position of having to fight to close a points deficit to the top of the table.
But in the last two rounds in Spain and Canada, Verstappen hasn’t been involved in incidents with the McLaren drivers, but Mercedes’ George Russell.
After the Red Bull driver’s ugly on-track lunge at Russell in the closing laps of the Spanish Grand Prix led to him being punished with a 10-second penalty, the pair met again on the front row of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve two weekends ago. They both played a sensible game at the start, with the Mercedes keeping ahead of the world champion, but Verstappen did not allow Russell to enjoy an easy race, never letting his lead grow to four seconds outside of the pit cycle all the way until the late Safety Car in the closing laps.
But only once the race result was secured did the drama begin between the pair. As they followed the Safety Car along the back straight, Verstappen appeared to briefly move in front of the leader for a moment, with Russell wasting no time in reporting the potential infraction to his team. With Verstappen just one penalty point away from copping an automatic one race ban, an infuriated Red Bull team saw Russell hitting the brakes on the straight as a deliberate attempt to bait their driver into a ban. They retaliated by lodging a protest of Russell with the stewards after the race – only to have it dismissed after the stewards determined that there had been no erratic driving by the Mercedes driver.
Having clashed in more ways than one in recent rounds, the two will be the focus of attention again over the next two weekends. First at Red Bull’s home circuit in Austria, a track that has been effectively a second home race for Verstappen in his F1 career, and then next weekend at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, where Russell will likely enjoy strong support from the local fans.
Whether the two will meet on track again this weekend will likely come down to how strong their respective cars perform around the Red Bull Ring. However the high track temperatures often seen at the high altitude circuit don’t flatter Mercedes’ car.
How many last chances for Colapinto?
Time rarely stands still in Formula 1. Just 48 days ago, Alpine officially confirmed that race driver Jack Doohan was being unceremoniously ousted from his seat in favour of Franco Colapinto. However, unlike when Colapinto was suddenly thrust onto the grid by his previous team, Williams, in the second half of the 2024 season, Alpine’s leadership were at pains to stress that Colapinto would only have a seat guaranteed until the end of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.
“The next five races will give us an opportunity to try something different and after this time period we will assess our options,” team consultant Flavio Briatore said at the time.
He has subsequently suggested Alpine’s deadline is a little softer than that. Nonetheless, just six weeks on from that announcement, Colapinto has already reached the final race of his originally stated tenure. While there are very few signs that Alpine are planning to call back Doohan for a second go in the car or even offer another driver a chance to race alongside Pierre Gasly, Colapinto’s future remains unconfirmed at this point.
Taking over a car mid-season is a challenge for any driver. So far, Colapinto’s results have largely matched that of Doohan’s. They have both achieved a best grand prix finishing position of 13th – twice for Colapinto in Monaco and Canada – meaning neither of them have scored a point in the championship thus far.
Both drivers also have a 50% Q2 progression rate in grand prix qualifying sessions and have each out-qualified far more experienced team mate Gasly a single time each, although Doohan had two additional attempts to do so than Colapinto. But when it comes to grands prix, Colapinto has one thing over Doohan: He has reached the chequered flag ahead of Gasly. Last time out in Canada, Colapinto came home in 13th place after spending the majority of the grand prix as the lead Alpine. However, this was helped significantly by Gasly starting from the pit lane after failing to progress beyond Q1.
At the first of several tracks Colapinto knows well, he will be fighting to prove he should remain in his car into Silverstone and beyond. A strong performance relative to Gasly would go a long way towards keeping him on the grid.
Taking it to the limit
In recent seasons, the Austrian Grand Prix has been the centre of Formula 1’s continued struggle to get to grips with track limits in the sport.
It came to a head in farcical fashion in 2023, when well over 100 laps set during the grand prix were deleted due to drivers running wide at the exits of corners – particularly the final two fast right-handers at the end of the lap. It led to a swathe of post-race penalties.
Something needed to change – and it did for last year’s event. The introduction of thin strips of gravel just beyond the white lines at the exits of several corners on the circuit proved to be an incredibly effective solution. While far from eliminating instances of drivers exceeding track limits – with 16 times deleted during the grand prix – there was just a single penalty for a driver breaking track limits on four or more occasions.
The efforts of the Red Bull Ring and FIA drew rare praise from a field of drivers who were now much happier to have a clearer and more natural solution to track limits. One that also provided them an obvious incentive to stay the right side of the white lines.
But it was not without some criticism, however. The typically unflappable Piastri made little effort to hide his disgust after having his best qualifying time in Q3 deleted after he was deemed to have run wide at the fast left-hander at turn six. A decision taken due to evidence from an overhead helicopter camera angle that the McLaren driver described as being “pretty questionable resolution”. The stewards’ decision to admit the evidence was contentious as it appeared to contradict a precedent set less than 12 months earlier.
Although track limits are, thankfully, unlikely to be the biggest talking point of the weekend, drivers still cannot afford to play too fast and loose with the exits of the Red Bull Ring’s quick corners this weekend. Expect to see a repositioning of the line at turn six to bring it closer to the gravel trap, as has happened at many other circuits.
Normal service resumed
The Austrian Grand Prix has been a sprint round since the year after the format was introduced. But that has changed this year.
Unlike 2022, 2023 and 2024, there will be no Saturday sprint race at the Red Bull Ring this weekend. Instead, drivers will have the rare luxury of three full hours of practice to validate updates and dial in their set-ups for the race on Sunday.
That will be no great loss to many fans tuning in to watch the action this weekend. It also looks likely to be a gain for inexperienced drivers, as McLaren have already announced they will use the opportunity to run rookie Alex Dunne.
With the same tyre compounds – C3, C4 and C5 – nominated for this weekend, teams are unlikely to need three hours of practice time to be prepared for Sunday’s grand prix. But whether that will affect the kind of grid we see at the end of Saturday remains to be seen.
The following feature presentation…
After what has felt like the longest lead-up to the release of a Hollywood movie since The Phantom Menace brought Star Wars back to cinemas in 1998, the imaginatively-titled Formula 1 movie ‘F1: The Movie’ will finally receive a public release next week. That means this weekend’s round in Austria will be the last time Formula 1 will be able to push the film to fans before it arrives in cinemas.
There are already plenty of impressions of the ambitious film project from critics and F1 figures alike – with RaceFans’ review coming after the weekend – but whether you’re in Spielberg for the event or watching along from home, you can expect to see plenty of promotion for the film across all three days of track action.
Are you going to the Austrian Grand Prix?
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Who do you think will be the team to beat in the Austrian Grand Prix? Have your say below.
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