HUNGARIAN GP – Oscar Piastri takes maiden win in fractious fights in Budapest beating Lando Norris
Oscar Piastri has taken his maiden Grand Prix win after his teammate Lando Norris finally allowed his teammate to pass him in the closing laps of the Hungarian Grand Prix. The fight for victory was fractious between McLaren and its drivers as Norris led most of the second half of the race but then refused the instruction to allow Piastri to win the race.
Piastri becomes the seventh driver to take his maiden win in Budapest in his second season in F1 having won the sprint in Lusail last year. McLaren will face questions about internal management following Norris’s refusal until the final laps to allow his teammate to pass, that decision made by the team to use team orders. The decision was made after Piastri lost the net lead at the first stop.
Norris argued that Piastri would have to catch him before he would let him by but all the time, he was extending his lead. For a long time, it appeared as if Norris would refuse to carry out the order, but in the end, he acquiesced. But despite the controversy around the use of team orders, it was McLaren’s first one-two since Monza 2021.
His engineer Will Joseph reminded him to “remember every Sunday morning meeting” and “I tried to protect you”. He also told him that “the way to win a championship is with the team – you’re gonna need Oscar and you’re going to need the team”.
The Englishman lost out immediately to his teammate Piastri after starting on pole and retained second after Verstappen overtook him by going off the track gaining position, which he duly gave back to avoid a penalty.
Come the final stop, and with Lewis Hamilton closing in and Piastri leading, in order to protect the one-two from the Mercedes, closing in and challenging. Hamilton was third taking his two hundredth podium of his career and extending his record of podiums in Budapest, though it was looking hard for him to fight to equal his nine wins at the same Grand Prix as he did a fortnight ago at Silverstone.
The end of term coming perhaps sign of the frictions growing as the sport heads to its summer break next weekend following Spa and at the halfway stage in the season more evidence that the championship is wide open after three races without a Red Bull win since July 2021.
McLaren have this weekend cemented their position as Red Bull’s closest challenges unless they are able to return to the winning form soon, what looked seven races ago to be another easy world title is over, the regulations introduced in 2022 delivering the convergence in the on-track racing
Piastri, who takes his maiden Grand Prix win “Very very special, this is the day I’ve dreamed of as a kid standing on the top step of an F1 podium. A bit complicated at the end but I put myself in the right position at the start and thank you for the team for an amazing car.”
Norris who finished second, “An amazing day for us as a team. That’s the main thing I’m so happy. It’s been a long journey to achieve this on merit. That’s exactly what we did We’re a long way clear of the rest and we did it in style.”
Hamilton said, “For us, the team have done a great job at pushing this car ultimately, we didn’t have the pace of the McLarens or of the Red Bulls but we were just able to hold on at the beginning of the race, it was very tough to hold on and make those tyres last.”
The Mercedes driver looked not to be able to fight but delivered a strong race despite a collision with his former title rival Max Verstappen. As the two fought for third in the closing stage Verstappen tried to overtake late into the first corner, but it was too late as Hamilton was turning in the Red Bull cut across and then the Mercedes driver rammed by the momentum lifted Verstappen after missing the apex.
Verstappen also lost fourth at the second stop to Charles Leclerc and finished nearly two seconds behind the Ferrari. The collision was the climax of a race where the three-time champion appeared frustrated and fought against Red Bull’s strategy choices, which first put him behind Hamilton and then at the second pit stop also behind Ferrari’s Leclerc.
Verstappen was placed under investigation for the collision with Hamilton, but they did not consider it to be moving under braking as Verstappen argued, but “it is our determination that the driver of Car 44 (Hamilton) could have done more to avoid the collision.”
Both managing to continue but the Dutchman stuck behind Hamilton in the second stint after making a later first pit stop than the Mercedes driver and failed to get by after several attempts. Its was a throw back to the bitter fight between the two for the championship in 2021.
Verstappen caught and re-passed Leclerc, but his anger seemed to spill over into his driving as he tried to pass Hamilton, locking up into the first corner they touched with Verstappen briefly went airborne with three wheels off the ground, bouncing back down on the track and going into the run-off area.
He was angry with car’s performance, lack of grip and the team’s pit stop choices, and when he was chastised by race engineer Giampiero Lambiase for going too hard too soon on his tyres after his final stop, he again swore.
He told reporters “I went for a move that was fully on but when I was in the middle of the breaking zone and already committed, [Hamilton] he keeps on warping right. If I hadn’t turned while breaking straight, I would have made contact with him.”
On the back-and-forth radio messages with his engineer, he said: “I don’t know why people think that you can’t be vocal on a radio, this is a sport and if some people don’t like that then stay home.”
Perhaps more solid evidence that Red Bull’s dominance is over and they could be struggling to readjust to having to fight for wins as they have now gone the longest period since July 2021 without a win. July often proving a pivotal month in the way championships play out in the second half of the season.
McLaren, who have moved ahead of Ferrari into second in the Constructors’ Championship, took a significant haul of twenty-seven points out of Red Bull’s lead in the standings and are now just fifty-one points adrift with eleven races still to go in 2024.
Carlos Sainz was sixth the second Ferrari splitting the two Red Bulls finishing nearly two seconds behind his former teammate, and comfortably ahead of Sergio Perez. The Mexican came through quietly overtaking followed by George Russell as they were one of the shocks when they were knocked out in Q1 yesterday. Perez finished three and a half seconds ahead of the Mercedes.
Yuki Tsunoda was ninth as he finished seven-tenths ahead of Lance Stroll to complete the top ten. Stroll’s Aston Martin teammate Fernando Alonso was five seconds outside the points, the two-time champion the final car on the lead lap. Daniel Riccardo was the leader of the lapped cars as he went backwards from ninth to twelfth.
Nico Hulkenberg was thirteenth ahead of Alex Albon by three and a half seconds with the second Haas of eight seconds of Kevin Magnussen behind the Williams. Logan Sargeant was eighteenth ahead of Esteban Ocon took and Guanyu Zhou was the final classified runner in nineteenth.
Pierre Gasly became the sole retiree after suffering a suspected hydraulic leak in the Alpine.