F1 steward blames Verstappen for Norris crash after giving 'MAXIMUM' punishment

An FIA-appointed Formula 1 steward has made it very clear who he thinks was to blame for Sunday's crash between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris at the Austrian Grand Prix.

The Red Bull star and three-time champion led the race at the Red Bull Ring rather comfortably until the latter stages when a pit-stop error allowed Norris to close the gap as the pair headed back onto the track with medium tyres on.

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The McLaren, with Norris at the wheel, also appeared to have the upper hand on Verstappen's Red Bull on the yellow-walled rubber, perhaps partly due to the fact that his tyres were fresh, whilst the Dutchman's were slightly used.

All of the above resulted in multiple laps of close, hard racing for the lead, with Norris accusing his rival of moving under braking on multiple occasions over his team radio.

Unfortunately, what felt like the inevitable happened on lap 64. As Norris tried a move around the outside into turn four, Verstappen and the Brit collided, resulting in punctures for both, but crucially, race-ending damage for the McLaren driver.

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Max Verstappen to blame for Lando Norris crash

Verstappen was awarded a 10-second time penalty by the FIA for causing the collision, and Johnny Herbert, who was one of those in the steward's room in Spielberg, is very clear that the three-time champion was to blame.

"It was Max’s fault. He is a hard racer. He is very, very hard to beat. He intimidates everybody," Herbert told Coin Poker. "That intimidation is something that Lewis [Hamilton], Michael Schumacher, and Ayrton Senna, have always done,"

"When you come up against Max as he is driving today, there’s a point if you’re Lando that you have to say: ‘I am here. I am at your side. You are trying to squeeze me off the circuit. And I am not going to move.’

"Lando did the right thing. He did not move. He did not have to. Some people said he could have moved. But that is not how you beat Max or how you win the Grand Prix.

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"It is the side of Max that has always been part of his armoury. We haven’t seen it for a while, because he has been so dominant. It is interesting to see how he reacts under pressure."

Herbert, who raced in F1 himself from 1989 to 2000, later added: "It is deliberate, which is why I use the word intimidation, where he goes to the very limits without getting himself in trouble - but he has always had this in his history,"

"I like competition because I think it is a very important part of racing. But I sometimes don’t like it when he gets to the point that you are actually forcing a car off the circuit. That is not what it is all about. It is about placing the car.

"He does place the car very well, but he just has that tendency to put everyone else in a position which goes beyond the drivers’ unwritten code. That is what we saw in Austria.

Johnny Herbert makes Max Verstappen FIA penalty revelation

‌Whilst Verstappen was slapped with a 10-second time penalty, it ultimately proved a punishment with very limited effect.

The Dutchman finished P5 on track after stumbling back to the pits for fresh tyres after the collision, and had a sufficient gap over Haas' Nico Hulkenberg in sixth to keep fifth spot even after the penalty had been applied. Ironically, the points gained actually led to Verstappen extending his lead at the top of the drivers' championship.

Despite calls for a stronger punishment, Herbert has revealed that the 10-second penalty was the most severe they could have given Verstappen under the FIA's rules.

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"That is the hardest one that can be applied under FIA guidelines that we operate under as stewards," Herbert said on the 10-second time penalty.

"McLaren have said it should have been harsher, but that is the game all teams play.

"If someone had flipped over or been barrel rolling down the track I don’t know if that would have changed things. Forcing a driver off the circuit or causing an incident is what it came under.

"That was the maximum sanction we could have taken."

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