Rand Norris restrained his fast-tracking teammate Oscar Piastri to claim victory at the Austrian Grand Prix in a grandstand finish.
Piastri was fast of the two for most of the race, but the strategy required him to close 4.3 seconds on the final 16 laps to claim victory. The pair were separated in less than two seconds on three laps, but with a machine equivalent to wearing tires, the piastry was not enough to reach an astonishing distance.
Norris took the checkered flag with a 2.695-second advantage and converted it from the pole to get a much-needed victory to reduce the championship deficit to 15 points.
“It was a tough race and I hit it all the way through,” he said. “It’s tricky, hot, tiring, but it’s the perfect result for us as a team. We certainly had a great fight. It was a lot of fun. It’s a lot of stress for me, but it’s a lot of fun.
“One two is exactly what we want and we did it again, so I’m so happy.”
Piastri partly thanked Norris for sweeping the left to cover Charles Leclerc from the line. As Leclerc committed inside, Piastri found plenty of space around the outside and came in second.
The race was temporarily neutralised with Norris’ leading piastry. Andrea Kimi Antoneri locked the rear axle in turn 3 and wiped out Max Verstappen at the top in a collision investigated after the race.
The two traded the fastest laps as Piastri thrusts into the defense of their teammates. His first opening came on lap 11 when Norris ran slightly deeper on Turn 1, giving the Australians the opportunity to move around the outside on top of the hill.
Norris cut back and took the inside line, lined up his sister cars and drove to Turn 4, where he took the lead. Piastri considered jumping inside Briton on Turn 6, but acknowledged the fight and thought about it better. He had a different look after four laps. A good exit from turn 3 gave him a chance at the end of the top straight.
Piastri showed his final look on the lap 20, with the pit stop prioritized on the line at the end of the first stint. Deciding to pass, he ambitiously attempts to ventilate Norris from the inside to Turn 4, but is dramatically locked up and put in danger before sailing wide before sailing out his teammates. The team told him it was “too remote” and told him not to try again.
Norris, who had been absorbing the pressure of Piastri, officially pitted at the end of lap 20 for a fresh set of hard tires.
However, Piastri prefers his engineers to deal with larger gaps than covering his teammates, but keeps them at a larger tire offset. He entered the lane four laps later, but the second stint went into the rhythm, causing a 0.3-second slow stop to 6.5 seconds.
The gap waxed and faded as the duo rapped the car at the back of the field through the central stint. Norris finished in 3.9 seconds on lap 52 when he changed his tires for the second time.
Piastri stopped on the next tour and scored 0.5 seconds at a faster stop, but he was oddly balked by rapped Franco Colapinto.
Colapinto was punished for five seconds for getting another car on track. At the end of lap 54, he set the target of Piastri to Norris in 4.3 seconds, and he quickly began to get caught up in his teammates.
“We need the pace. Please help,” Norris radioed as the margin reduced to less than two seconds at 10 laps.
He was told to focus on high speed corners, but he also benefited from traffic wrapped around a 2.69-mile lap and earned a DR from slower cars to help him defend against faster teammates.
It was a battle between Gabriel Boltreto and Fernando Alonso, who placed their final nails in Paistry’s comeback campaign, and for most of the final laps, he kept his distance between him and his leader, preventing slow movements and locking Piastry in second place.
“I did my absolute best, but I probably could have done a better job when I moved forward for a moment,” he said. “It was a good fight. Sometimes it was a bit on the edge, maybe a bit pushing the limits, but it was a good race.”
Charles Leclerc completed the podium at the end of Monegascu’s lonely race, finishing in 17 years behind a leader who was nine years older than his teammate Lewis Hamilton.
“I really appreciate the weekend as a team,” he said. “Unfortunately, today’s pace wasn’t good enough. The third was the best we could do.
Hamilton finished fourth after a relatively competitive performance, completing the second-highest scoring weekend at Ferrari the year after the Monaco Grand Prix, bringing the team back to second in the title table.
George Russell was similarly uninfluential in the race. His Mercedes was unhappy on the 86°F condition as he finished 33 seconds after Hamilton.
Liam Lawson scored a career-high sixth place on an ambitious medium-hard one-stop strategy, beating Alonso and Boltreto, who finished seventh and eighth respectively.
Boltreto, who scored the Maiden Grand Prix points, defeated Sauber teammate Nico Halkenberg, who finished 9th in the team’s first double score.
Esteban Ocon scored the final points of the race in 10th place ahead of the walks of teammates Oliver Baerman, Isaac Hajar, Pierre Guthrie and Lance.
Corapinto’s penalty for pushing Piastri was neutralised by Tsunoda’s own teen penalty for punting Argentina in a previous fight, exacerbating the horrifying afternoon for the second Red Bull racing driver and his team, the first time since the 2021 British Grand Prix.
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