Lando Norris tells Max Verstappen to ‘keep quiet’ at Austrian Grand Prix

Lando Norris has urged Max Verstappen to “keep quiet” in a subtle dig at the Red Bull champion. The Briton defended F1’s sprint race format and called on the Dutchman to “get on with it” after previously sharing his opposition to the system.

Earlier this season, Verstappen warned he could quit F1 if they continued to meddle with the traditional format. But Norris stressed the concept was fun and admitted that he understood why the update was made. 

He told Sky Sports F1: “In a good way Max is Max. I’m happy with doing them every now and then, I don’t want the whole season to be like this. That’s definitely not true. Places like this makes for a more exciting weekend and it’s for the fans at the end of the day, they are the people who drive Formula One, They make Formula One what it is. 

“Sometimes we ought to just keep quiet and get on with it but at the same time there’s always still things you can maybe do to improve. The Fridays I love. One of my strengths is getting in the car and doing well. From a driver’s perspective it’s much trickier. 

“I prefer this challenge. It is a very long weekend. Every session means something, which I think is a good thing.” Verstappen had raised his concerns about F1’s sprint format in the past but dialled up his criticism earlier this year. 

Verstappen slammed the new sprint qualifying concept ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and even urged bosses to reconsider the idea. He explained:”Just scrap the whole thing.

“I think it’s just important to go back to what we had and make sure that every team can fight for the win, that’s what we have to try and aim for [rather than] trying to implement all these kinds of artificial excitement.

“I got bored through today’s qualifying. I like to have one particular qualifying where you just put everything in it, which was yesterday which I of course enjoyed. But then we had to do it again today.

“I was like ‘my God, another qualifying’. I just don’t really enjoy that.”

Verstappen took pole position for this afternoon’s sprint race after a dominant performance in Spielberg. He was almost half a second quicker than team-mate Sergio Perez in the mixed conditions. Meanwhile, Norris will start the race P3 with his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri down in 17th.