Helmut Marko has admitted that had Red Bull's strategists acted on Lando Norris' impending penalty for track limits violations, the race-ending clash might have been avoided.

Verstappen's disastrous pit stop on Lap 51, and a scrappy out-lap which almost saw him lose control of his car, saw his lead reduced to just a couple of seconds, at which point the pursuing Norris ramped up the pressure as he moved in for the kill in a car that clearly had better pace.

However, in his eagerness to hunt down the world champion the Briton exceeded track limits on three occasions, at Turn 3, 1 and then 3 again, leading to the black and white flag which demotes that one more violation and you are penalised.

Sure enough Norris went wide at Turn 3 again, and while the stewards subsequently deemed this a breach of Article 33.3 of the Sporting Regulations, by the time the (5 second) penalty had been imposed the controversial clash that saw him eliminated had already happened.

Speaking after the race, Helmut Marko said that his team's strategists should have anticipated the penalty, and advised Verstappen that he didn't need to defend quite so vigorously.

"The victory was lost by several factors," the Austrian told Servus TV at race end. "The fact that the pit stop went wrong, Lando slipped into the DRS window as a result, and also our assumption that the hard tyres would be the better choice in hot weather, which was not the case. The temperatures were lower, meaning that Lando had fresh tyres in the last stint and we had used ones, which was also a factor.

"But I would say that both drove unnecessarily hard," he admitted. "We could perhaps be blamed for this, we knew that an investigation with track limits was underway against Lando. But we didn't know whether and how he would be punished. So, with hindsight, you could have said: 'OK, let him go'.

"But let's look on the bright side, we've extended our championship lead, both in the Constructors' Championship and in the Drivers' Championship.

"It was a really great battle at times," he added, "until it somehow degenerated into who was pushing who more, who was violating more track limits, instead of concentrating on finishing fairly".

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Pavlo, 9 hours ago

"@Paulinho - disagree, the Max+RB was comfortably quicker than Lando+McLaren till the pitstop, with Lando not catching Max.
Then there was 4s delay on pitstop, and then Lando managed to win couple seconds and get into DRS. For me it's not enough to claim that Lando+McLaren would have been able to win 4 more seconds and then attack. Maybe yes, but we didn't have a chance to see."

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2. Posted by Paulinho, 01/07/2024 9:53

"At the end of the day, the Lando & McLaren combo was quicker than the Max & Redbull one, unfortunately Max made the choice of not letting the McLaren past, which resulted in Max crashing into the McLaren, which resulted in neither teams winning.
"

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Red Bull failed to heed Norris' penalty, admits Marko

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