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Red Bull’s Max Verstappen may have won Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix, but the pundits’ plaudits belonged to Bahrain-owned McLaren, with their young star driver Lando Norris continuing his streak as the only driver to score points in every race this season.
The Englishman finished third in the race behind Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas and ahead of defending world champion Lewis Hamilton.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz came in fifth, followed by Sergio Perez (Red Bull), Norris’ team mate Daniel Ricciardo, Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) and Fernando Alonso (Alpine).
Norris even earned praise from last year’s world champion 20 laps into the race, when Hamilton told his Mercedes team over the radio: “Such a great driver, Lando.”
Of course, the higher a driver rises, the more every penalty bristles them. And, Norris certainly felt wronged by the FIA stewards after he was given a five-second penalty after an incident with Perez in the fourth lap.
The stewards said that he had not given Perez sufficient room and forced him off the track, while Norris felt it was a risk taken by Perez that hadn’t paid off.
“It’s his risk to go around the outside - he knows there’s gravel there,” he explained.
“You watch every other junior series; every time someone tries to go around the outside and doesn’t commit to it, they end up in the gravel. I didn’t even squeeze him off.
“You understeer around the corner anyway, he should have expected he wasn’t going to make it. I don’t know, I’m just annoyed because it cost us P2.
“Hamilton had a (pace) problem but we had the pace to be ahead of Bottas at least, especially in the second stint. Would have liked to be second and not third again, just cementing myself a bit more, so just a bit annoyed about that.”
Perez, of course, felt differently, saying: “Obviously it was over the limit, but Lando got away and he didn’t have any damage while I basically got my race ruined. It was not fair racing.”
In addition to the time loss, Norris also had two more penalty points applied to his super-licence - bringing him to 10. Drivers who reach 12 points over a rolling 12-month period face an automatic race ban, but the first two of Norris’ points are set to expire before the next Grand Prix.
Impressively, Norris has already scored more points this season than in either of his two previous F1 campaigns. He is fourth in the world championship ahead of Bottas and just three points behind Perez.
Last weekend was also his best starting position, as he finally started in the front row in P2 behind Verstappen.
Even 1996 F1 world champion Damon Hill confessed on Twitter: “Awesome. I’ll be honest, when Zak first signed (Norris) I thought it was a bit of a punt. But he is in superb form. Top job.”
Before Norris, McLaren were struggling as constructors, unable to break into the Top 3 since 2012 – shocking for a team that, since 1998, were generally in contention for the championship.
However, 2019 – the year that Norris made his debut in F1 with McLaren, changed the team’s trajectory. His best race in his debut year came in Bahrain, where he finished sixth.
During his time in Bahrain, the young Brit also took some time to talk to St Christophers School students about his racing experience, and ahead of the season-opener in the kingdom earlier this year told GulfWeekly that Bahrain always had a place close to his heart. He added that he would not mind having more preseason testing here because of the much milder weather.
In 2020, Norris became the youngest Brit ever to finish on the podium, coincidentally, at the Austrian Grand Prix last year.
This year, partnered with Ricciardo, he has emerged as a worthy team leader, earning 101 of the team’s 141 points, as well as the early multi-year contract extension he inked with McLaren in May.
As the Brit gears up for his home race at Silverstone from July 16 to 18, with fans for the first time since 2019, all eyes will be on him as he carries the hopes of McLaren ... and perhaps even the dreams of a kingdom in the Middle East driving him one day to the world championship.
