feature-image

Imago

feature-image

Imago

If you don’t know what happened at the Hungarian GP (rather, after it), here’s a quick recap. Max Verstappen won the race by a 33-second margin to Lando Norris in second, who Sergio Perez closely followed. During the podium celebrations, Norris did his trademark champagne bottle popping, which resulted in Verstappen’s porcelain trophy falling and, unsurprisingly, breaking. And for the past four days, the headlines haven’t been Red Bull breaking McLaren’s 1988 record of 11 consecutive wins. Instead, they’ve concentrated more on the aftermath of Norris’ actions, and Media Day at the Belgian GP provided another update.

Terrell Owens holding Dude Wipes XL

After the podium celebrations, Lando was asked what happened on the podium with Max’s trophy. He jokingly replied, “Max just placed [his trophy] too close to the edge. It fell over, I guess. Not my problem. It’s his!” He even added that as long as it wasn’t his trophy that broke, he didn’t care that Max’s wasn’t intact. And even though he said all this in humor, many people didn’t take it that way, and the Brit received a lot of flak for it, especially from Hungarians.

Watch What’s Trending Now!

ADVERTISEMENT

For Hungarians, the trophy is a priceless artifact handcrafted by the Herend Porcelain Manufactory over six months. The 97-year-old company specializes in luxury hand-painted and gilded porcelain, and, needless to say, the $45,000 trophy has a certain significance to the Hungarian culture. Because of this, when Norris seemed so casually dismissive about his actions—even after apologizing—that’s still one of the first things he’s being asked about and made to feel guilty. And that was the case at Spa.

This time, when he replied, he ensured his intentions were clear. Replying to David Croft’s question in the FIA Thursday Press conference on the same, Norris said, I had no intention in never doing such a thing. And I know how much it means to the Hungarians & part of their culture & so forth. Of course, I wanna enjoy my time, it was never my intention to do such a thing. I did apologize to Max & obviously made couple of jokes about it which maybe I shouldn’t. I do feel bad for, if he did it to my trophy, I’d be annoyed so; I do apologize for it.” While people are still making him feel guilty about what happened, Red Bull extended him and McLaren an olive branch.

ADVERTISEMENT

Read More: Max Verstappen’s GF Kelly Piquet Finally Accepts Lando Norris’ Apology to Send Him Special Invitation

ADVERTISEMENT

Red Bull forgives Lando Norris for his actions

After the incident, McLaren posted a video of the incident on Twitter and captioned it, “We are so, so sorry…@redbullracing and @Max33Verstappen! 🫣” Red Bull replied to it, writing, “We’re gonna need some glue 👀” Although at that point it wasn’t confirmed that Herend Porcelain would be making Max another trophy, Red Bull made a classy gesture as an olive branch by commenting on another one of McLaren’s posts.

ADVERTISEMENT

Celebrating another good race weekend, McLaren posted a photo with the entire team, captioning it, “🧡 T E A M 🧡” Red Bull commented on the post, writing, “We should have done one together.” That would’ve been an iconic picture, considering Red Bull broke McLaren’s record (and Norris, in turn, broke Verstappen’s trophy). But even though that picture opportunity didn’t happen, it made one thing certain—Red Bull and McLaren are on as good terms as Lando and Max are.

Do you think Lando Norris can ever live this incident down?

ADVERTISEMENT

WATCH THIS STORY | F1 Stars Max Verstappen & Lando Norris Go Wild With Their Girlfriends in Monaco

Share this with a friend:

Link Copied!

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Written by

author-image

Aditi Krishnan

757 Articles

As a Newsroom Editor at EssentiallySports, Aditi Krishnan analyzes reader behavior and enhances copies for global sporting events. Her biggest win on the desk saw her infuse a balance of storytelling, emotion, and reporting into an Olympics article that witnessed a 41-second increase in session duration. Apart from learning a little more about the sports world every day, she also provides feedback to divisional editors, which they implement in their processes. Her degree in Mass Communication enabled her to forge a path in sports journalism, where she filed over 700 copies as a motorsport journalist. To this day, she cherishes her time on the desk during the 2023 Singapore GP. When Aditi is not working, she loves pursuing her myriad interests in playing sports, sketching, baking, reading books, and listening to music.

Know more

Edited by

editor-image

Aishwary Gaonkar

ADVERTISEMENT