Helmut Marko believes Red Bull’s failure to warn Max Verstappen that Lando Norris was facing a track limits investigation could have avoided their crash late in the 2024 Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix.

Verstappen and Norris collided in the final stages of Sunday’s race at the Red Bull Ring, after the McLaren driver went off the track three times and received a black-and-white caution flag, before exiting in their second skirmish at the Red Bull Ring. Track turn 3.

This later resulted in Norris receiving a five-second time penalty, as is automatically the case in F1 rules once a track limit warning is issued, but before that could happen, the pair collided at Turn Three – this time as the McLaren driver attacked on the line. The outside and Verstappen overtook him.

Speaking to Red Bull’s Servus TV channel after the race, Marko said: “We lost the win due to several factors.

“The fact that [second Verstappen] There was a mistake at the pitstop, and Lando slid into the DRS window as a result, and we also assumed that hard tyres would be the best option in hot weather, which wasn’t the case.

“The temperatures were lower, which meant Lando had new tires recently and we used tyres, which was also a factor.

“But I would say that they were both driving unnecessarily fast. And we are probably to blame for that: we knew that there was an investigation underway against Lando regarding track limits.

“But we didn’t know if he was going to be punished or how. So, after looking at it, we could say, ‘Okay, let him go.’”

“But let’s look on the bright side, we have extended our lead in the championship, both in the constructors’ championship and in the drivers’ championship.”

Marko, Red Bull’s motorsport advisor, also considered that Verstappen’s accident, which almost led to him going off the track on the outside lap after his second stop, was another factor that “made all of this possible” and allowed Norris to have the chance to win that had seemed unlikely for a long time.

Verstappen had dominated the race up to that point, with his speed on the medium tires in the first stint being much better than that of Norris, before the McLaren team began to close in as their second stint on the hard tires ended.

Marko considered their final battle to be “a really great battle at times” until it “somehow degenerated into who was pushing who more, who was violating more track limits, rather than focusing on finishing the race fairly.”