Norris comes out on top of McLaren tussle for victory in Austria

“Tricky, hot and tiring” were the words Lando Norris used to describe his hard-fought victory at the Austrian Grand Prix, with the McLaren driver holding off his teammate’s relentless attack to claim his third win of the season. 

It was a dramatic beginning to the scoring Spielberg outing, with the original race start aborted during the formation lap when Carlos Sainz’s Williams failed to move from his slot at the back of the grid. 

After finding his FW47 “stuck in first gear” as the clock struck 3:00 PM local time, the Spaniard was later able to get going with some assistance from the track marshals, however, as he veered into the pit entry to take the delayed start from the pitlane, his rear brakes ignited in flames and he was forced to abandon the race completely. 

As a result, the 19 remaining drivers spent the next ten minutes baking in the 30°C heatwave before being released for a second formation lap.

When the five lights finally went out, it was pole-sitter Norris who maintained the lead into the first turn, coming under pressure from his teammate across the first half of the lap before racing was brought to a halt. 

Carrying too much speed into Turn 3, Kimi Antonelli showed his inexperience at the Red Bull Ring when he bowled into the home team’s main man after locking up and steaming down the inside of the corner, ending his and Max Verstappen’s Austrian campaign while also connecting with Liam Lawson’s VCARB 02. 

Although annoyed, both drivers were okay as they instantly began debriefing the collision while making their way off the track, leaving the marshals to clear the stricken Mercedes and Red Bull as the Safety Car made its only appearance of the race.

Antonelli was handed a three-place grid penalty for causing the collision, with the penalty to be served at next weekend’s British Grand Prix.

At the Safety Car restart, the McLaren duo instantly pulled away from the Ferrari in third, building a three-second buffer over Leclerc within the span of five racing laps.

Without any threats in his mirrors, Oscar Piastri took that as a sign to forge an attack on his teammate for the lead.

The Australian was momentarily successful in doing so, striking on Lap 11 when he passed Norris at Turn 3 — however, the #4 didn’t go down without a fight as he held onto Piastri as they charged side-by-side into the following braking zone, reclaiming the lead position despite Piastri breathing down his neck for the remainder of the lap. 

On Lap 15, the Australian had another look into the first corner, though he opted to withhold until Lap 20 where he made a move that had him apologising to the team after the race, having narrowly avoided contact with his teammate after he locked up into Turn 4.

Piastri was informed of the McLaren pit wall’s opinion on the incident, with his race engineer Tom Stallard saying the manoeuvre into Turn 4 was “too marginal” and was not to be replicated.

Treating his gearbox to a breath of clear air, the duel came to an end on the following lap when Norris pitted from the lead while Piastri decided to extend his first stint to have fresher tyres in return for an estimated interval of four seconds. 

Norris dropped behind the #81 and the steady Ferrari duo when he emerged from the pitlane, with Piastri making his first stop — a slow 3.4-second stop due to troubles with the front left tyre — three laps later. 

As a result, the Australian rejoined the race 5.5 seconds behind Norris — a margin that grew as the rest of the field provided some entertaining battles. 

After his first stop of the race, Lewis Hamilton had a handful of midfield cars to overtake on his way back into fourth place, with Liam Lawson one of the unwavering challengers who encouraged the seven-time world champion onto the grass as he took the long way around the flying Racing Bulls driver.

Further down the order, tyre offsets were also felt within teams when Gabriel Bortoleto begged the Sauber pit wall to request that Nico Hulkenberg move out of his way, however, the German remained focused on his race, continuing with his own battle much to the dismay of the impressive rookie who was forced to wait a little while longer.

There were countless close calls between drivers around all corners of the short circuit, though Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto weren’t lucky enough to fit into the category, with the sole-remaining Red Bull driver tagging the rear wheel of the Alpine, sending Colapinto spinning and earning himself a ten-second time penalty in the process. 

Beyond the halfway mark of the reduced 70-lap dash, Piastri began to close the margin to the race leader when he started to lap a second quicker than Norris, halving the interval to three seconds before he skated across the sausage kerb at Turn 1, halting his process as the second round of pitstops arrived.

When Norris opted to make his second tyre change of the race, the #81 inherited the lead for a total length of 4.3km as he followed suit on the next lap, maintaining second place when he emerged from the pitlane on the medium compound tyre. 

Not impacting his position in the order, but rather his chase to the rear of his teammate’s McLaren, the Australian was frustratingly faced with lapping the ongoing battle between Tsunoda and Colapinto.

So caught up in his mission to hold position over the Red Bull driver, Colapinto failed to spot the fast-charging McLaren in his mirrors or the blue flags warning the #43 and instead forced all four wheels of Piastri’s MCL39 onto the grass on the run to Turn 4. 

Impacting his out-lap on the fresh medium tyres and adding over a second to the interval between the teammates, the near-costly moment made the Australian’s chase all the more difficult, however, not impossible as he reduced the margin to 2.6 seconds with ten laps to go.

Missing the spotlight during the live broadcast, Piastri made a strong statement over team radio about the team he infamously severed ties within 2022 when he said: “Alpine still managed to find a way to **** me over all these years later”.

Within the span of two laps, that gap further fell to sub-two seconds, prompting Norris to react on the timesheets despite being informed that he was carrying front wing damage.

Both a help and a hindrance for either side of the McLaren garage, the duelling teammates soon arrived on the scene of a poetic battle between Alonso and Bortoleto — veteran vs rookie and manager vs driver.

Putting on one of the most exciting displays of racing all day, the pair showed no signs of backing out of their fight for seventh place to aid the McLarens, costing Piastri precious time in his hunt.

The interval between the leaders dropped to a late low of 1.3 seconds on the final lap, however, Piastri ran out of time, forced to have a front-row seat to Norris’ third victory of the season at the Austrian Grand Prix. 

Taking the chequered flag over 17 seconds behind the Woking-based outfit were both Ferrari drivers, with Leclerc completing the Spielberg podium while Hamilton achieved his highest Grand Prix result with Ferrari thus far.

With the hot conditions weakening Mercedes’ potential, a fifth-place finish was all the sole-remaining silver arrow could achieve, with George Russell finishing where he started ahead of Lawson whose bold one-stop strategy allowed him to say the same thing.

The Racing Bulls driver achieved a career-best result at Red Bull’s home race, adding eight points to his season total after holding out against his hungry midfield competition for 70 laps. 

Alonso and Bortoleto settled in behind the RB driver, with the Sauber rookie claiming his first-ever haul of points in Formula 1 after a standout effort that earned him ‘Driver of the Day’, while his teammate trailed five seconds behind to make it a double points finish for Sauber in Austria. 

And to round out the top ten on Sunday, it was Esteban Ocon who forced his way into the final points-paying position, adding a single point to Haas’ championship heartbeat.

At the other end of the order, four unlucky drivers failed to reach the chequered flag, with Sainz not starting the race, Antonelli and Verstappen crashing out on the opening lap, and Alex Albon retiring on Lap 17 with a mechanical issue — his third DNF in a row.

Lando Norris’ triumph reduces Piastri’s championship lead to 15 points ahead of the British Grand Prix, with McLaren’s home race weekend kicking off in just a few days.

With the event running across the first weekend in July, the first practice session of the historic weekend will kick off at 21:30 AEST on Friday, July 04.

Image: Formula 1

2025 Austrian Grand Prix Race Results:

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