Norris puts McLaren back on top with dominating Hungarian GP win

Lando Norris won the Hungarian Grand Prix in decisive fashion after McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri was hit by lapped traffic while attempting to defend his lead and then retired with gearbox trouble.

Piastri, starting third, got a sizzling start to tail Norris into the first turn. The Australian took the outside line into the downhill Turn 2 to pile on the pressure, and his teammate ran deep from the dustier side of the road, opening the door to Piastri cutting down his inside to take the lead.

The move was crucial for Piastri, who had lacked Norris’s pace all weekend in the upgraded McLaren but now had the opportunity to control the race at a circuit that makes overtaking difficult.

Norris held his lead through the first turn, but a fast-starting Piastri was soon past. Sam Bagnall/Getty Images

“Much faster, but dirty air,” Norris told his team early in the first stint, but with Max Verstappen leaping to third off the line and bottling up the quicker Ferrari drivers behind him, there was no immediate threat to McLaren’s one-two formation to encourage the team to act on the call for team orders.

The gap in pace between them grew on the harder compound after their first stops, and Norris had no trouble keeping himself within a second of Piastri in the lead as they pulled away from the field. Even running off the road on lap 29 did nothing to diminish his advantage, costing him 0.7s that he made back within a lap.

“I don’t really have any [extra pace]; the car’s been super inconsistent on this tire,” Piastri said, while Norris harried the pit wall for a beneficial team order.

“I need to get past. Do something, please,” he said, and when denied, he added: “I’m miles faster … I’ll pull out a 10s gap with no tires.”

McLaren responded by pitting Piastri on lap 33, giving Norris the opportunity to build a tire offset in his final stint to get him past the Australian on track.

But Piastri had his victory bid taken out of his hands by a bizarre moment of contact with the lapped Carlos Sainz on lap 38, apparently owing to problems with the blue flags system. The Williams driver was battling with an Aston Martin for position and appeared not to note Piastri taking the racing line through the corner, turning in on the McLaren and shoving it off the road.

Sainz was penalized 5s for causing the collision.

The contact knocked Piastri just outside Norris’s pit window. McLaren stopped the Briton for his second tire change at the end of the lap, and he rejoined the track ahead of his teammate and with the net lead of the grand prix.

Piastri’s engineer pre-empted the Australian’s fury. "That's Sainz that cost us that,” he was told.

The reply was direct: “Oh mate. It’s better you don’t f***ing talk to me now. Nice of you guys to factor that one in, by the way. Thanks.”

Piastri knew his race was lost, but his already bitter afternoon then ended with the further frustration of a gearbox failure that put him out of the race on lap 58.

With his only challenger out of the race, Norris cruised to a comfortable 15.1s victory, his first as the defending world champion and McLaren’s first of the season.

“My pace today was probably some of the best pace I’ve ever had,” he said. “The car was beautiful to drive, and I felt very confident. A great race.”

Verstappen finished an unlikely second thanks to a strong start that got him into third place behind the McLaren drivers. Though his Red Bull Racing car lacked pace, he spent most of the race balking Lewis Hamilton to keep himself in contention for a podium finish, including with a superb double overtake of the Ferrari and Liam Lawson just three laps after the Briton had undercut him during after their first pit stops.

Verstappen finished an unlikely second thanks to a superb start that got him ahead of the faster Ferrari drivers, where he kept himself to the finish, including with a superb double overtake of Hamilton and Liam Lawson just three laps after the Briton had undercut him during after their first pit stops. An inch-perfect 29-lap final stint on used softs around drivers with fresher rubber then sealed the deal.

“I didn’t expect to be on the podium today, but we worked hard for it,” he said. “Very happy.”

Kimi Antonelli completed the podium, up from seventh on the grid, with an offset strategy that saw both his pit stops delayed, allowing him to run in the clear air of the lead and even briefly contemplate a one-stop race before being hauled in for a set of hards on lap 53 for an aggressive finish.

It dropped him to sixth, but a virtual safety car three laps later for Piastri’s gearbox failure shuffled him up to third, and he fended off Hamilton on fresher tires to extend his championship lead to 50 points.

“It was a tough race” he said. “Today was big damage limitation. We’ve got to keep pushing because the second half is going to be hard, but we’ll try out best.”

Charles Leclerc finished fourth, inheriting the place from Hamilton after the flag after his teammate served a 5s penalty for speeding in the pit lane.

Isack Hadjar finished sixth ahead of George Russell, who dropped from sixth to 20th on the first lap with anti-stall off the line but put in a fighting performance to recover to just 2s off the back of the front-running pack at the flag.

Lawson finished eighth and first of the lapped cars after a frenetic last-laps battle for the place with Nico Hulkenberg, Arvid Lindbland and Gabriel Bortoleto down to 11th place. The result moved Racing Bulls up to fifth ahead of Alpine in the constructors championship.

Pierre Gasly finished 12th ahead of Aston Martin teammates Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso. Franco Colapinto, Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz and Oliver Bearman finished two laps down.

Both Cadillac drivers joined Piastri on the retirement, with Valtteri Bottas suffering a brake failure and Sergio Perez ending his day with an apparent suspension problem.

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