Was Lando Norris’s robust move against Max Verstappen off the line at Barcelona an indication of how their future encounters will play out? We can’t wait to see
ALEX KALINAUCKAS
I know his birthday present already – it’s either like a big mirror or some glasses and it will be fine!” Max Verstappen was all jokes and smiles after winning the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix. Perhaps the sight of his once great rival, Lewis Hamilton, flat on his back on the Barcelona press conference sofa as he waited for Verstappen and (especially) Lando Norris to finish speaking to TV crews downstairs had tickled the Red Bull driver. Maybe he enjoyed Bob Marley’s Could You Be Loved, which Hamilton was playing from his phone.
More likely, Verstappen was finally able to be gracious about Norris’s stiff defence off the line three hours earlier at Barcelona, since the race was won. He certainly wasn’t overly happy behind the wheel just after a move that had Verstappen skipping his right-front wheel across the grass lining the pitwall – “I got pushed off on the grass”, he needlessly reported to engineer Gianpiero Lambiase and the eavesdropping officials. Yet it really was fantastic viewing – tough, but just the right side of fair.
“It’s always difficult to judge in that situation,” Norris replied when Autosport asked for his take on the move, plus our pondering of whether it was the first sign of more hard racing to come between the pair. “I can’t get a tape measure out and measure it perfectly. I’m not going to make his life easy. There was enough space, I think… What? I’m just going to stop talking… I think it was just racing. I gave him enough space. I don’t think at any point there wasn’t enough space for him to stay on the track… What? Do you want to answer it?”
Norris was narked by more Verstappen and Hamilton jokes – off-mic this time. The 24-year-old is well known in the media for his effusive answers, good days or bad. With his more regular appearances in the FIA press conferences, these have been longer of late – apparently something his fellow professionals can’t abide. But if we can’t have Norris’s thoughts on the prospect of full-blooded battles between two friends, two of the best drivers of their era, we’ll share our own instead.
At the risk of having to pen another open letter in apology to Norris (14 December 2023), we’ll start with the negative. There’s an argument that, had Norris been willing to chop across Verstappen’s bows even more brutally, pe
