The pair made contact at Turn 3 while battling for the lead at the Red Bull Ring, a clash that ended Norris’ race and saw Verstappen handed a 10-second penalty for his role in the incident.

It was the conclusion to what had been an aggressive battle with the McLaren driver complaining his rival was moving under brakes, the Red Bull driver arguing he was being divebombed.

With the rise of McLaren, the battle between the two was viewed as a drawing of battle lines in this year’s world championship.

Both drivers, however, have moved to play it down following a conversation the day after the Austrian Grand Prix.

“For me, the only thing that I cared about is, of course, maintaining my relationship with Lando because we are great friends,” Verstappen claimed.

“For me, after the race, I said, we have to just let things cool down because emotions run high.

“We immediately spoke on Monday and I think we came to the conclusion that we actually really enjoyed our battle.

“We looked at the incident; it was such a silly little touch that, of course, had great consequences for both of us and naturally bit more for Lando with how to puncture then evolved.

“But we like to race hard. We’ve done this for many years, not only in Formula One, even online racing, where we had a lot of fun together.

“These things have to carry on, because that’s what we like to do. And I think it’s great for Formula 1.”

It was a view shared by Norris, who made critical remarks immediately after his retirement last weekend.

Upon reflection, he doesn’t believes there’s any need for the championship leader to apologise, despite the implied guilt due to the time-penalty he received.

“Honestly, I don’t think he needed to apologise,” Norris reasoned.

“I think some of the things I said in the pen after the race were just more just because I was frustrated at the time. A lot of adrenaline, a lot of just emotions. And I probably said some things I didn’t necessarily believe in, especially later on in the week.

“It was tough. It was a pretty pathetic incident in terms of what ended both our races.

“It wasn’t like a hit, it wasn’t like an obvious bit of contact. It was probably one of the smallest bits of contact you could have, but with a pretty terrible consequence for both of us, especially for myself.

“He didn’t doesn’t need to… I don’t expect an apology from him. I don’t think he should apologise.

“I thought it was as a review, good racing. At times, maybe very close to the edge but like we said we’ve spoken about it we’ve talked about it and we’re both happy to go racing again.”

Verstappen and Norris head into this weekend’s British Grand Prix as the favourites for victory, with McLaren tipped to be a close match for Red Bull Racing once again.

Opening practice begins at 12:30 local time (21:30 AEST).