Colossal egos collide

With Max Verstappen and Lando Norris colliding 7 laps before the chequered flag, this put them both out of contention for the podium places, which resulted in Russell taking a surprise 2nd win of his career, followed by a 4th podium for Oscar Piastri with Carlos Sainz rounding off the podium.

After leading the race with a margin of 7 seconds, Max Verstappen took to the pit lane followed by Lando Norris. During the pit stop, Verstappen suffered a slow left rear tyre change, resulting in a 6.3 second stop. This meant that although Verstappen came out still ahead of Norris, the gap was cut down to within 3 seconds and the pace of the two swung into Norris' favour, closing the gap down to within 1 second and in DRS range of the Dutchman.

This battle was foreshadowed from the day before in the sprint race, with it ultimately going in Verstappen's favour and taking the win after a battle with Norris, which put him down to 3rd place behind his teammate, Oscar Piastri, after leaving the door open to Max into 4 and running wider than ideal as a result. This no doubt planted a seed in Norris' mind which blossomed once he was within range to challenge Verstappen on the Sunday; feeling he'd have to prove himself and make up for what he referred to as a "Rookie mistake".

The two of them battled for multiple laps, both driving at peak aggression. For Norris, he repeated his tenacious dive-bombs from the sprint the day before, sending it multiple times into turn 3 and running Verstappen off the road on one occasion, giving back the position afterwards; this was countered by Verstappen moving under braking multiple times to differing extents while under siege of these attacks, which Norris called out multiple times over the radio. With both drivers attempting to exercise their authority over the race track, this meant that a collision between them was inevitable.

Verstappen predicted a dive-bomb to the inside by Norris into the braking zone of turn 3, moving to the inside entering the corner; however, this time, Lando chose the outside line. This was important as this meant he would have more purchase and grip as he would be on the racing line and with the chance of getting a better exit out of the corner with DRS to overtake Max. However, Max drifted back over to the racing line in the braking zone, and left just less than a cars width to the edge of the track, causing him and Norris to touch. The resulting incident gave them both punctures, which unfortunately put Norris out of the race, but Verstappen carried on to finish 5th place at his team's home Grand Prix in Austria, not being hindered by the 10 second penalty given to him due to his collision with Norris.

So the result of this battle was Norris out of the Grand Prix with a 5 second penalty for track limits, and Verstappen with a 10 second penalty but finishing P5. From my point of view, both drivers were fighting for a win, and at the end of the day, both of them were driving over the limit, with Verstappen's moving in the braking zone on lap 63 being 'the straw that broke the camel's back'; a shame for both of them.

However, the man to take the the chequered flag first was George Russell, running an anonymous race since he dispatched Hamilton after their battle in the first 10 laps of the race. He did excellent to manage his pace and ensure that if there was any carnage ahead, that he'd be in it to win it. Following him to the 2nd step of the podium was Oscar Piastri, who too had great pace and recovered from a P7 start due to his deleted lap caused by exceeding track limits in qualifying. And finally, Carlos Sainz finished in 3rd, being the lone-scoring Ferrari after Leclerc suffered a broken front wing on the opening lap, pitting at the end of it. However, Carlos' pace was good and cemented himself securely ahead of Hamilton by 19 seconds at the flag.