How Norris converted his "nothing to lose" Hungarian GP one-stop into victory over Piastri

"For Lando, there was virtually nothing to lose by trying a one-stop race; for myself, potentially there was."

Oscar Piastri took a conciliatory stance towards McLaren's Hungarian Grand Prix decision to split strategies, one largely driven by circumstance, as Lando Norris found himself in the box seats for victory. Both drivers were operating in different contexts amid the opening stint of the 70-lap affair at the Hungaroring. Piastri was locked in a battle with surprise pole-winner Charles Leclerc; the final stage of qualifying had been accompanied by a change in wind direction that had caught McLaren out, and the pecking order had been blown inside-out like a cheap umbrella as the orange cars' pace evaporated.

Norris, meanwhile, was recovering from a start in which he'd slipped from third to fifth; while attempting to battle his team-mate, Norris was pincered to the inside line at Turn 1 and was rounded by both George Russell and Fernando Alonso in the opening corner. While fourth was easily recovered from Alonso two laps later, as the Aston Martin driver's heroics could not quite extend to containing a McLaren MCL39, Russell was a much more difficult target to break down.

The indications before the race were that the Hungarian Grand Prix would require a two-stop strategy. As a rear-limited circuit with lots of traction zones and longer-radius corners, even at lower speeds, the tyres were in the softer range and thus would have a finite operating time before degrading too heavily to remain competitive. 

McLaren figured that Piastri's battle would remain with Leclerc, who had weathered the early laps and had just extended his lead to over three seconds by the end of the 14th lap. Two laps later, Tom Stallard told Piastri to get the hammer down and "use the pace" to draw closer to the Monegasque's tail. This was very much the set-up for an undercut attempt at the end of the 18th lap - "box overtake" the call - with Piastri intending to get the hard tyres on and belt the car around the circuit to pull off the move. 

It got Piastri closer to Leclerc - for a time, at least. But there was still the small matter of a 1.2s gap between them once Leclerc pitted on the following tour to collect his own hard tyres, as Ferrari responded immediately to quell Piastri's progress. 

Leclerc kept Piastri at bay over the opening stint to demonstrate Ferrari's qualifying speed could be converted into race pace

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Norris, meanwhile, was yet to pit. He'd been sitting in Russell's wake, attempting to jostle and hurry and harry the Mercedes' gearbox, but he wasn't any closer to making the difference needed to set up an overtake. Indeed, Norris appeared to back off Russell after a few laps of running within DRS range, as engineer Will Joseph initial strategy call of "plan A minus five" very much suggested that the tyres on the #4 car were close to perishing. 

Did that spur Russell into pitting? It's possible but unlikely, as Mercedes likely knew that containing Norris was going to be a tough ask in any case and it simply wanted to respond to Leclerc's same-lap stop on lap 19. And, in free air, the McLaren forecast changed; instead of Plan A minus five (a presumed two-stopper), Norris found himself able to get a bit more out of his mediums and the pitwall then switched to a choice between "Plan A extend, or Plan D" - the latter being a one-stop.

"When Will first asked me, 'What do you think of the one-stop?' I think at that point, I was already about seven seconds behind Oscar and eight or nine behind Charles," Norris said. "Not that I thought my race was over, but it was pretty slim that I was going to be able to at least fight from there, even on a perfect two-stop strategy. 

"We didn't think that the one-stop would have been possible still. But credit to Lando, he managed to put together some very strong sectors and lap times with tyres that were relatively used" Andrea Stella

"So, my expectations were not high, but I was more banking on a safety car or a VSC or something to bring me back into the race. But I didn't have any of that. In the end, I guess it didn't matter. I can't remember if it was just before George boxed or just after that. Will said, 'What do we think of a one-stop?' and I said, 'Let's do it.' 

"My confidence wasn't the highest, but it was my best chance of trying to do something. And it turned out to be a little bit trickier because it actually allowed me to fight until the very end for the win. Not sure it still felt like the best strategy, but I think with how difficult overtaking was, it turned out to be pretty good.

"I knew I could make the tyres get to the end quite easily, but it was more to stay ahead of the other people," Norris added, admitting that he hadn't expected it to pay off quite so handsomely. "It was trying to get ahead of mainly George and Charles at that point. I didn't have a lot of hope that I'd still be in a fight with Oscar to the very end, but turned out to be. So that was even better."

The switch from stretching a two-stopper to a conventional one-stopper was a masterstroke of strategy for Norris

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Andrea Stella also revealed that McLaren didn't think the one-stop could be possible, even after converting Norris' strategy: "When it comes to Lando and the one-stop strategy, when we extended, leaving Lando out, we didn't think that the one-stop would have been possible still. But credit to Lando, he managed to put together some very strong sectors and lap times with tyres that were relatively used."

And that's the crux of the strategy paying off for Norris; it's not that the one-stop was employed, but that the Briton reeled off a series of consistently quick laps after his lap 31 switch to hards. Norris lost around a second per lap to Piastri while extending his medium stint, but clawed a fair chunk of that back once he'd taken his own set of hards; between laps 33-45, the crossover between the start of Norris' second stint and the end of Piastri's, the Briton was circulating in the mid-1m20s, while Piastri was in the low-to-mid 1m21s. 

Thus, Norris soaked up quite a lot of the time loss to Piastri as the Australian benefitted from his first set of new tyres, and had the track position once Piastri stopped for a second time. Knowing that Norris was on a one-stop, Piastri had the bit between his teeth to make progress. When Leclerc (who was still ahead of the championship leader at this point) pitted for a second time on lap 40, McLaren asked Piastri to extend his own stint to make passing the Monegasque later that little bit easier. Piastri stated that he didn't care about Leclerc and wanted to go after his team-mate but, for either case, extending would help him in the race's denouement.

"We wanted to give Oscar enough of a tyre delta to pass Leclerc, but also to have a fair chance on Lando, because that would have meant being on an optimal two-stop," Stella explained. "So we wanted to make sure that, thinking about Leclerc, we were not deviating too much of an optimal two-stop, because that would have been unfair to Oscar in relation to his competition with Lando, which was fairer. 

"And we also checked with Oscar what his preference was, and certainly wanted to have an opportunity to win the race. And we thought that with enough tyre delta to Leclerc, Oscar would have had a chance in the end."

Piastri hung on for five more laps until stopping for the second time; he was over 12 seconds behind Norris, and over five seconds shy of Leclerc. Norris continued to lap consistently in the 1m20s, maintaining the quickest level of pace he could while trying to ensure he kept the hard tyres intact for a near-on 40-lap stint. Leclerc, meanwhile, was struggling; he unleashed a furious dialogue on the radio that lamented the missing pace of his Ferrari. He later confirmed this to be a chassis-side fault rather than the front wing adjustment he'd initially feared had caused his drop in pace, although Russell reckoned that the Ferrari team had upped the tyre pressures on its final set of hards to avoid wearing out the skid block. Either way, Piastri very quickly hunted the polesitter down and breezed past at the start of lap 51.

This gave him 19 tours to catch and pass Norris. At the start of the next lap, the gap was 7.2 seconds; five laps later, it was 4.8s. Piastri was finding about 0.6s per lap on his team-mate, with full permission to go racing. 

Piastri had fresher tyres but Norris had track position - McLaren allowed both to fight for the win

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Norris was fretting about traffic, and he was right to do so; the packs of backmarkers battling over either glory, or the final point, were starting to get in the way. Of course, Piastri had to deal with the same challenges, but he could at least follow Norris through once waved by.

Eventually, the Hamilton-Hadjar-Antonelli clump of battlers hoping for a 10th-place finish were eased aside and set up a five-lap sprint to the finish. Piastri got close at the start of the 68th lap, but couldn't find a way down the inside; at the start of the 69th, he almost got too close. It was a repeat of Austria's Turn 4 near-contact; Piastri went for the lunge, but locked up and narrowly missed Norris turning in for the corner. The leader was wise to a move on the final lap and, with scarce opportunities around the rest of the lap for Piastri to pass, maintained the lead with a 0.698s winning margin.

"Could we have matched Lando? That's the question that I don't have the answer to" Oscar Piastri

Piastri took a level-headed view of a situation where, had the situation been slightly different, he might have been the victor in the race. "I got asked about it. Very difficult to know from the cockpit what is going to be the best thing to do. Like I said, when you're the car behind, your risk-reward ratio is always much different. So, yeah, there's always that. Could we have matched Lando? That's the question that I don't have the answer to. So, I guess that's the only thing. But we wanted to try and win the race as well, and the best way of trying to beat Lando is by trying to win the race."

He knows that this is how the cookie crumbles sometimes, and Piastri's crumb of comfort heading into the summer break is that he's got a nine-point lead with 10 races to go. Norris might be in the ascendancy after a few misfires in the opening rounds, but Piastri has the marginally easier job to maintain what he has... not that winning a championship is ever easy.

Piastri takes the championship lead into the summer break, but Norris has three wins from the last four rounds

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