How Norris shrugged off his first-lap error to deliver on McLaren's Hungarian GP pace

Oscar Piastri was palpably furious when he spied Lando Norris' sister McLaren trickling out of the pitlane ahead of his own. For something to rile up the usually placid, so-laid-back-he's-horizontal Australian, it's got to be pretty infuriating - like, perchance, watching your own victory hopes end up in tatters. 

It went something like this: Piastri felt he'd done the hard work with his lap one, Turn 2 move on Norris at the start of the race. Having picked off Charles Leclerc into the first corner, Piastri punished Norris' approach onto the dirty outside line at the 90-degree left-hander and lunged for the lead as his team-mate fumbled the metaphorical bag. And, while Norris was attempting to assert his dominance and demonstrate to his team that he was the faster driver, Piastri rolled with the punches and soaked up the pressure from the car behind.

Everything in Piastri's world was all going pretty well. Norris kept attempting to ladle on the pressure, to the detriment of nobody but himself as he endured a couple of wide moments, but at least it gave him something to do in catching back up to his team-mate. It was like watching an energetic spaniel attempt to chase a matted tennis ball, only to foist it away with its snout rather than put its slavering jaw around it. The reigning world champion was angling for a way past, be it with an on-track move or through attempting to pull the right strings with his team, but McLaren remained resolute in its pursuit of equal treatment. 

Norris is just as capable of brilliance as he is at making his own life difficult. In Hungary, he did both; his form in qualifying was spectacular, and his pace in the final part of the grand prix was effortlessly excellent. But he braked too late into Turn 2, had to gather up the rear end to stop it flailing about on the dirty part of the circuit, and this opened the doors wide for Piastri to strut in. 

For McLaren, it probably didn't matter too much which order the drivers were in; it had first and second, and it was up to its strategists to manage that. Miami aside, the Woking squad has had little chance to repeat its championship-winning form this year, and the scarce opportunity of victory needed to be capitalised upon. Were this the early part of 2024, McLaren might have let it slip; today, no chance. 

McLaren's new floor had injected a spot of much-needed performance into its MCL40, particularly as Red Bull had made up ground with its Austria package, while Mercedes and Ferrari were edging away in the title fight. This, allied to its solid low-speed performance, had given McLaren the whip hand in qualifying, putting it clear of expected-favourite Ferrari in a close-fought qualifying.

Norris let Piastri trickle through at Turn 2 after running wide

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Even with its additional pace, McLaren had to be careful to respond to the cars behind - particularly Ferrari, as it was willing to throw the kitchen sink at making a move on Max Verstappen. The Dutchman's tidy start to the race carried him clear of a slow-starting Leclerc, and briefly looked at following Piastri through at Turn 2 into second before Norris regained his balance.

From there, Verstappen proved to be indefatigable while ahead of the Ferrari duo, despite launching into lap-by-lap complaints about his car's handling, balance, and tyre degradation. This was the conversation of a man reviewing a Mitsubishi Mirage on a motoring show, rather than detailing a state-of-the-art F1 car.

Ferrari's attempts to force the issue and gather some level of undercut did not afford McLaren the free strategic choices that it perhaps would have wanted, as the potential loss of track position outweighed the benefit of a tyre offset. When Hamilton pitted at the end of lap 13, it set off a chain reaction as Verstappen stopped a lap later in an effort to stall the oh-so-powerful undercut. It didn't quite work as planned, but the four-time champion nonetheless mugged his seven-time counterpart at the start of the 16th tour.

The ease at which Norris reclaimed the lost time very much suggested that he was much more comfortable with his lot. And he knew it

Piastri had enough time to hang it out until lap 16 and to return to the circuit ahead of Verstappen, which left Norris looking vulnerable to losing places when stopping on the following lap. But, and here's the clincher: Norris' in-lap was six tenths faster than Piastri's, and even a marginally slower pitstop did not derail the Briton's bid to stay ahead of the Red Bull. 

Norris' call and Piastri's fall

The next stint, and its aftermath, defined the race. Even though the McLarens managed to pull away from Verstappen after just about managing to stay in front over the stops, it was evident that Piastri was not enjoying the hard compound.

"On the medium, [I felt in control]," he reflected. "On the hard, I felt like I was still in the box-seat to win the race, but it wasn't going to be pretty. I didn't really feel in control on the hard, no. I felt like the car was significantly worse for some reason. Even with how difficult it was, I felt like I could maintain enough of a gap that I wasn't going to be overtaken."

Norris continued to sit on Piastri's gearbox, only falling out of overtake range when he had another slide through Turn 2, but the ease at which he reclaimed the lost time very much suggested that he was much more comfortable with his lot. And he knew it. On the approach to the end of the stint, once again forced into the reckoning by Hamilton front-loading his race with pitstops, Norris was angling to pit first, gain the undercut, and use whatever clean air was available to pull ahead by the time Piastri had received his own service. 

Even with his surplus of pace, Norris couldn't do a lot about Piastri - until the final stops

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But that's not quite how McLaren wants to do things, particularly as it had given itself grief at Monza last year by pitting the car behind and unwillingly granting Piastri the advantage with Norris' slow stop. Piastri was leading, and he'd earned pit call priority.

Hamilton stopped for a second time on the 30th lap, putting McLaren on a timer - albeit one extended slightly when Hamilton emerged (for the second time) behind Isack Hadjar. That Verstappen did not respond immediately also bought time, and McLaren duly chose to bring Piastri in at the end of the 33rd lap. 

If he couldn't have first priority, Norris reasoned, then he was going to extend. Before Piastri stopped, the two were running in the high 1m25s; in clear air, Norris opened the taps and started to run comfortably in the mid-1m24s. There was a hint of edge to Norris' rapid turn of pace, as if to prove to McLaren that he was indeed the faster of the two. 

That being said, Norris had some help. Piastri had more pace on his two out-laps on new hards than Norris could unlock on his older boots, but traffic ultimately proved to be Piastri's failing. There was a significant problem with the GPS system that handles blue flags, leading to the wrong drivers getting the blue-flag read-out and often not keeping the backmarkers in the loop. 

Carlos Sainz had been battling with Fernando Alonso in Turn 2 and, without a clear indication of blue flags, was evidently not in the mood to look behind him. As Piastri attempted to pick his way through into Turn 3, Sainz chopped across and clouted the McLaren driver, costing the two seconds that ultimately flipped the pit delta in Norris' favour. When Norris eventually made his second and final stop on the 39th lap, he emerged just ahead of his team-mate.

Piastri took to the radio with fury but, on later reflection, agreed that his team was not to blame; his displeasure was firmly aimed in Sainz's direction: "It was more the fact that I got crashed into by a lapped car. I think the timing of my stop was fine. We wanted to cover off Hamilton, which was perfectly normal. Without getting crashed into, I would have been ahead of Lando still.

Piastri's car packed up with a gearbox problem

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"From that side of things, I was fine. In the moment, I was incredibly annoyed. In fact, annoyed is not the word I would use, but there's a multitude that I would with Carlos. Then, obviously, when Lando came out ahead, I knew I had no pace to go and attack him. So I knew my chances of winning the race were done from there; in the moment, I was pissed off that I'd lost the lead of the race. But that wasn't the fault of the team. It was Carlos' fault."

Although it looked close between McLaren drivers on the pit exit, Norris engaged his final demonstration of his true pace and rocketed to a considerable lead in the subsequent laps. A lap after stopping, Norris was 2.1s ahead. Two laps later, the gap was up to five seconds. At this point, Piastri was long forgotten and Norris' focus was firmly on denying Kimi Antonelli the chance to make a one-stop work.

The now-lead McLaren was finding about a second-and-a-half per lap on Antonelli and, although told by race engineer Will Joseph to take it easy once he'd caught up, it scarcely stopped Norris from reeling off a late-braking manoeuvre into Turn 1 before resisting a fightback into the next turn. In fact, the biggest challenge McLaren had was in telling Norris to slow down, so eager was he to build a massive lead with the pace at his disposal.

Norris was irrepressibly quick. A six-second gap at the end of the lap 56 VSC grew to 15 seconds by the end of the race there was absolutely no stopping him

Piastri's subsequent retirement with a gearbox issue presented the case. In the prior laps, he'd not been able to make any real inroads on Antonelli, and Mercedes did the job for him by electing to bring the championship leader in for a second stop - worried that he'd run out of tyres by the end. Norris was told to keep off the kerbs to prevent any damage to his own gearbox, as Piastri's stoppage had presented him with a chance to pit for softs under a virtual safety car.

Even taking on board the advice to take more margin, Norris was still irrepressibly quick. A six-second gap at the end of the lap 56 VSC grew to 15 seconds by the end of the race there was absolutely no stopping him - his words. 

"I was just very, very happy with a lot of things," Norris mused post-race. "The car was still horrible to drive at times, but quick, and I'd rather a horrible but quick car than anything else!

Piastri congratulates Norris after overcoming his own disappointment

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"The pace I had the whole race, even behind Oscar at the beginning - it wasn't my finest Turn 2, but after that I was seeing what my pace was like, and I just was better in every sense in terms of degradation, in pace. And I was convinced I could still win the race even after that, whether I would box or I would force him to box and I would go long and get fresh tyres and come back through. So I was so convinced I could win the race today, and we did.

"Of course, unfortunate for him and unlucky, because I think we could have had a 1-2. But my pace to stay so close to him for so long... we were just on another level today, and I felt in a very good flow of things. And when the car's good and when I'm in a good flow, there's no stopping us."

The battle for silver: how did Verstappen finish second?

After qualifying, Verstappen complained that his car was 'degrading' faster than the tyres; with each passing lap, the RB22 seemed to become more and more loose at the rear end. Early in the race, he reported that the gearshifts were poor, that the damping wasn't doing its job, and that - again - it was becoming harder to drive. On the face of it, it reads like the Fry & Laurie racing driver sketch, in which the driver (Hugh Laurie) reveals "there were a lot of problems with the car" repeatedly, to the fury of the increasingly irate pit reporter (Stephen Fry) who remarks "yes, but you won!".

But still, Verstappen thought it quite a feat to finish second, admitting that his first reaction was "how the hell did I end up here?". Let's work that out. 

There's an easy answer here: Verstappen chose not to pit under the VSC, choosing to risk putting another 15 laps on his soft tyres rather than lose track position. He'd been locked in a tete-a-tete battle with Hamilton all race; while it looked like he'd lost out on the undercut strategy at the end of the first stint, his sneak attack on Hamilton was majestic. At the time, Hamilton was preoccupied with clearing Liam Lawson and perhaps hadn't seen his former title rival duck out from behind the Racing Bulls in the run to the corner.

Unlike the first stint, where Hamilton stayed glued to the Red Bull's rear end as Verstappen unfurled an inch-perfect defence of third place, the Ferrari couldn't really stick with the Red Bull on the hard tyre. Instead, Hamilton was doing a bit of tyre saving through the meat of the stint, but this wasn't really helping either.

Ferrari kitted him out with a second set of hard tyres at the end of the 30th lap, with which he planned to close in, take the undercut, and then ease off to preserve them for the rest of the 40-lap stint. For a time, it looked as though it had worked out; Verstappen did another 11 laps, taking on the soft tyre for the remaining 29. 

Verstappen could hardly contain his surprise at finishing second

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He needed reassurance that the car could handle the degradation; indeed, Gabriel Bortoleto had opened his race with a soft-tyre stint of the same length. Verstappen shook out eight seconds behind Hamilton, but sensibly chose to be sparing with the pace; he was closing in, sure, but not at a level that was unsustainable for the more delicate tyres.

But the VSC changed this. At the point when Piastri retired on lap 56, Verstappen was now two seconds behind and still catching; Ferrari chose to pit Hamilton, take the softs, and use the offset to catch and pass the Red Bull. But this was complicated by Antonelli, on three-lap-old hards; the two were pretty much level at the safety car line, to the point where it was debatable that Hamilton could stay ahead without invoking the stewards' ire for the third race in a row. The Briton gave the place up, presuming that he could clear Antonelli later with the softer tyre and then close in on Verstappen, but this ultimately did not materialise.

Firstly, Antonelli's hard tyre pace was enough to ward off Hamilton. Secondly, the blue flag-less traffic proved to be much more of a slog for the Antonelli-Hamilton duo than it had been for Verstappen, particularly as they lost time behind one-stoppers Bortoleto and Lindblad in the middle sector. It was enough to buy Verstappen more time, delaying the progress of the cars behind enough to guarantee second place. 

"I still don't really understand how we are second, but I think as a team we performed strongly. I see it as a bit of like over-performance" Max Verstappen

"I was still struggling with the same things as yesterday, so the car was just extremely oversteery, just dragging quite hard at one point as well," Verstappen said. "But I do think that in the start, moving forward was making our first stint possible. We got undercut, but then I made the move on Lewis, which then I think made my second stint a little bit more straightforward. And then the team also put me onto the softs, which initially I was like, 'That's going to be a long one to the end,' but we made it work.

"Overall I still don't really understand how we are second, but I think as a team we performed strongly. I see it as a bit of like over-performance to what we expected, so that's of course a good thing considering how everything felt. And I saw also when I jumped out of the car again, there was damage on the car for whatever reason. It was not made easy for us."

The final podium before F1's summer break - how much will change at next month's race at Zandvoort?

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