Austria served up yet another direct on-track battle between the McLaren drivers — but this time, with a different outcome.

Lando Norris came out on top, securing a hugely important victory and significantly reducing the gap to his teammate in the championship standings.

McLaren’s fight at Verstappen’s home track

This leaves us with the question: could Piastri, with an alternative strategy, have given himself a better chance of fighting for the top step of the podium? And if so, what exactly went wrong?

An incident on the first lap at Turn 3 between Max Verstappen and Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli took both drivers out of contention. This shifted the spotlight entirely onto the two McLaren drivers at the front of the field, who, from that moment, were the main protagonists in what turned out to be a fantastic race between them.

Oscar Piastri did the most important thing straight away: he overtook Leclerc’s Ferrari and slotted into P2 behind his team-mate. From that moment, and right up until Norris made his first pit stop, Oscar stayed within DRS range, a constant and visible threat.

The first and only time the Australian managed to get ahead of Norris was on Lap 11. After Norris made a mistake, the chance for an overtake became much greater, and Piastri seized it, getting past on the straight between Turn 1 and Turn 3 to take the lead. But it didn’t last long. Telemetry data shows that, unusually, Norris was the first to lift off the throttle before Turn 3, something he hadn’t done in previous laps, nor would he do in the laps that followed.

By doing this, Norris effectively let Oscar through, giving himself the advantage of using DRS down the next straight. Thanks to a stronger exit from Turn 3 and better top speed, Norris regained the lead and held onto it through the next corners.

The next key moment came with the timing of the pit stops, and in particular, Piastri’s decision. Even before the race began, it was fairly clear that the medium-hard-medium strategy was the strongest option. The only real question was when to pit.

Norris came in on Lap 20. That same lap, Piastri made a costly error at Turn 4, locking his front-right tyre.

Then came the crucial decision: should Piastri pit immediately to stay close to Norris, or stay out longer and try to capitalise on fresher tyres later on?

And it seems that this was the key mistake that ultimately took away Oscar’s chance for a stronger fight. We could hear over the team radio that his race engineer was initially satisfied with his pace on the following lap, but just two laps later, his lap times began to drop off significantly. It’s very likely that both Oscar and his team misjudged the situation, and that his actual lap times turned out to be much worse than they had anticipated.

Meanwhile, Lando, running on fresh tyres, was lapping about a second faster per lap. By the time Piastri finally came in for his stop on lap 24, the gap between the two McLaren drivers had grown to over five seconds.

Would an earlier pit stop have helped Piastri?

If Piastri had pitted straight after Norris, he would likely have rejoined around 1.5 to 2 seconds behind, on near-identical tyres. It’s hard to say whether that would have changed the result — we saw in the first stint how difficult it was for him to pass Norris even when within DRS range, unless Lando made a mistake.

Piastri knew this, and that’s why he felt trying something different was his best chance. Unfortunately, his error at Turn 4 on Lap 20 undermined that plan.

And once again, we return to a theme we’ve seen repeatedly this season: the importance of clean air. At the Red Bull Ring, overtaking is relatively easy thanks to three DRS zones — but having clean air seems to matter even more.

By analysing the lap data from the first stint, a clear pattern emerges that repeated almost from Lap 1 through to Lap 20: with the help of the DRS system, Piastri consistently achieved a much higher top speed and was able to close the gap on all three straights. However, from Turn 4 through to the end of the lap, it was Norris who could make use of better grip and traction, which allowed the gap to increase once again — and so the cycle continued lap after lap.

Quite simply, the driver behind didn’t have enough downforce because of the dirty air, which made it impossible for him to get into a position to truly attack or race his team-mate.

It was also clear in this race that the driver who pitted first gained the advantage; in McLaren’s case, the one leading on track. So Piastri’s attempt to gain an edge with a later stop was a reasonable gamble at the time.

In the second and third stints, Piastri was consistently a little faster — not by a huge margin, but enough to close in towards the end. Once again, this showed how much cleaner air helped his pace.

It’s highly possible Piastri would have closed into DRS range if not for the late incident with Franco Colapinto, who didn’t spot him while battling Yuki Tsunoda.

What we can conclude after this entertaining race is that Norris has regained some of his confidence, at least for now, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that this year’s title will go to the driver who does the better job in qualifying. One striking statistic: Norris has only won races this season when starting from pole.

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