Formula 1 ®
Norris decides to be a team player gifting the win to Piastri! Frustrated Max bangs wheels with Lewis and falls to P5 screaming and hollering. LCH takes his 200th podium.
Piastri took his maiden grand prix victory in a McLaren one-two ahead of Lando Norris in a dramatic race in Hungary amid a heated row over team orders.
Behind them, in a race full of see-sawing action, old rivals Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen collided as they disputed third place.
Both continued but Hamilton held on to third and the Red Bull driver, his race full radio messages peppered with swearing, dropped back to finish fifth behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
McLaren’s team orders controversy unfolded as they tried to manage their way to a one-two, their first since the 2021 Italian Grand Prix. Piastri led Norris for most of the race after taking the lead in a three-car fight between them and Verstappen around the first corner.
But an earlier final pit stop for Norris – made by McLaren to protect him against Hamilton’s Mercedes, which had stopped earlier – put him ahead of Piastri.
Norris was repeatedly asked to slow and let Piastri back past, and reminded of his responsibility to the team, but he refused to do so until just two laps from the end.
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”.
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.
Lando
“It’s tough. It would be tough for anyone when you’re leading the race to give it up,” Norris told Sky Sports. “I was obviously put in the position.
“They made me box first and gave me the chance to lead the race and pull away quite comfortably and to do what I was doing.
“I think it was fair to give the position back. I don’t want to come across as the guy who is not fair. Oscar has done a lot for me in the past and helped me in many races.
“He drove a better race than I did. He got a good start, a better start and mine sucked. He deserved it and it was the right thing to do.”
Lewis
Firstly, a huge congratulations to McLaren on the one-two and Oscar (Piastri) on his maiden victory. They were incredibly strong today and deserved the result. Oscar has been doing a fantastic job ever since he got into F1, been very consistent, and it was only a matter of time before he got a win.
The team has done a great job to continue making progress with our car. We knew we didn’t have the speed of Oscar or Lando (Norris) today, but we were able to secure the final spot on the podium. It was a challenge at times to keep Verstappen behind whilst also making the tyres last. Our battle at the end was a little hair-raising but that’s motor racing. I’m really happy to be back on the podium and for another solid points haul. We now head to Spa looking to finish the first half of the season on a high.
Max
“Today was a tough race for us so naturally that frustrated me as I want things to be better. If you look at the whole race I don’t think we were fast enough; we unfortunately just didn’t have the pace and the strategy wasn’t working for us today. The high temperatures on the track also meant that the tyres overheated, especially when we were trying to overtake throughout the race, which was very tough.
We got stuck behind cars and let ourselves get undercut and I think we just didn’t have our best day. We had to fight our way back and lost so much time that we lost touch with both the McLarens. As the pace of the car wasn’t as good, we really needed to capitalise on the strategy and we just didn’t manage to do that today. I need to look back at what happened with Lewis but I committed to the move and I don’t think I braked too late but we collided. I don’t think we could have beaten McLaren today but, from qualifying yesterday, I did think that P3 was on the cards, so it is a disappointing day all in all.”
Fernando
RACE P11
“Unfortunately we missed out on the points today and didn’t quite optimise our race. We pitted quite early and from that point on we had quite a long race ahead managing the tyres. It’s the first long distance we’ve done with the new package, so we need to go and analyse our new updates and learn more ahead of Belgium next week.