Very fine margins are deciding Formula 1 races. Even over the course of a grand prix or sprint distance – think Lando Norris leaving the door ajar for Max Verstappen in the shorter Austria contest this year – a split-second call can make the difference.
Maybe this is why the drivers are so tetchy these days – George Russell’s understandable efforts to get Verstappen penalised after Qatar GP qualifying last weekend utterly enraged the Dutchman. Yet he emerged as the winner in the fifth nail-bitingly close direct contest against Norris this term.
It was another Verstappen performance peak the rest just don’t seem able to scale in 2024. But the main Qatar contest was also a reminder of just how much title potential Norris possesses.
He edged a team-mate as good and as fast as Oscar Piastri in both qualifying sessions on this rapid, technical track last weekend. That ended up being the critical difference for Piastri on Sunday, as he was left stuck behind Russell and later the again excellent Charles Leclerc. Norris, meanwhile, was right with Verstappen before Alex Albon’s mirror departing changed the race.
It can never be known if Norris’s near half-second pace advantage over the eventual winner in the closing laps on the hards would’ve worked out around what can be a struggle for Red Bull on harder compounds – at a time where the MCL38 lights up.
PLUS: The F1 safety car rule that nearly "had Red Bull over" in Verstappen's Qatar win
Verstappen had no need to push to the end as hard as he did for the race’s first half, while he had also just started to increase his lead – Norris clipping the Turn 1 exit gravel a factor here – when the safety car was called.
The reason why the race for the win was ruined came down to Norris failing to lift when passing waved double yellow flags with Albon's detached mirror littered on the Losail circuit’s main straight - but off the racing line.
His penalty was deserved and in keeping with previous precedents – such as the sanctions handed down to Nikita Mazepin and Nicholas Latifi for the same infraction at the end of the 2021 Austrian GP. True to form, Norris held his hands up commendably afterwards.
“I've let the team down,” he told reporters, his helmet only just having left his hands in a rare mixed zone appearance for such kit, highlighting the discombobulation of Norris computing his error. “The team gave me a great car, easily the quickest out there, and I f***** it up.
The 2024 title challenge clearly came earlier than either McLaren or Norris expected – remember how he still lacked a GP victory as the season started. But the mistakes narrative has reignited come the final rounds
“I don't know what I did wrong. I'm not an idiot, if there's a yellow flag, I know I need to slow down. That's rule number one, you learn in go-karts. For some reason, I didn't do that today because I've not seen it or I've missed it or something.
“So, I have to take it on the chin. They think I've done something wrong, I must have done something wrong and I can only apologise for the rest of the year to the team.”
This is what is so odd about what happened on Sunday night: Norris knows this rule intimately, after that Baku Q1 encounter. There, he was chastised and questioned too fast in some quarters – having clearly done what was required and not reacted to a different colour flag.
The 2024 title challenge clearly came earlier than either McLaren or Norris expected – remember how he still lacked a GP victory as the season started. But the mistakes narrative has reignited come the final rounds.
However, at least Norris has one more chance to banish this and also pay McLaren back in this Sunday’s Abu Dhabi finale. McLaren should again be favourite given the plethora of medium-speed corners at Yas Marina and Norris has shone here in the past.
But Verstappen has won the last four Abu Dhabi contests – his 2020 triumph against a COVID-shedding Lewis Hamilton giving him a momentum springboard to launch from into that campaign of campaigns the following year. Norris needs something similar and Verstappen is also providing another important lesson on being across key, if tiny, details when the pressure is on.
Perhaps with the memory of his 2021 Qatar qualifying penalty for also not lifting at a waved double yellow stirring, Verstappen immediately knew that his rival hadn’t slowed passing the marshal waving the yellow flags. He also remembered the right procedure for an aborted start back in Brazil, when Norris and Russell hadn’t at the grid’s head.
It’s an underappreciated part of Verstappen formidable game. Not that he really wanted to talk about it when asked about how he stays across such details on Sunday night: “Well, I knew that I lifted because I saw the double yellow. I know that, of course, if I wouldn't have lifted, it would have been investigated straight away. So, you're just on it.
“I asked if he lifted because he had a DRS, I think, from a backmarker [Valtteri Bottas, who they had just lapped] at the same time as well. And then, when we came out of Turn 1, I saw that he was a lot closer. So, I just asked the team to check it.
“It was just a normal question. And I know, with double yellows, they're quite strict…”
In a different way on Sunday, both drivers pleasingly showed how they’ve taken onboard the most high-profile racing rules lesson of the season. When the safety car lights malfunction left Verstappen vulnerable at the second restart, they ended up going wheel-to-wheel yet again.
But Norris showed he understands exactly where he must race, in getting his nose ahead at the turn-in apex of this latest skirmish, while Verstappen didn’t run him completely off-track this time.
This may only matter for one more race, with changes to the Driving Standards Guidelines coming for 2025. Autosport understands this set to feature more revisions than just altered inside line attack etiquette, as had been suggested as the Qatar event began following a healthy meeting between the FIA and the drivers.
But it showed again how close and brilliant this pair are and, overall, Qatar had a whiff of Bahrain 2021 – a race Verstappen lost through his own tiny error.
If this is the commencement of the 2025 title fight between these two – with Hamilton, Leclerc and Piastri additional expected challengers but perhaps facing more question marks than the 2024 protagonists – then it’s off to a thrilling start.
Soon it will be for more than just dead rubber bragging rights. And the tiny calls will have to go Norris’s way if he wants to topple an undisputed F1 heavyweight, as Verstappen himself did in 2021.
