Oscar Piastri can officially call himself a Grand Prix winner. The Australian won the Hungarian Grand Prix after taking the lead at the start. Despite that though, the win was anything but easy.
The two McLaren drivers, starting in first and second, were off to a good start. Lando Norris managed to block off his teammate well, but added pressure from Max Verstappen meant they went into the first corner three wide. Piastri came out ahead and Verstappen in second, but because the Dutchman took the place from the outside of the track, he was ordered by his team to give up the place to Norris. From there on, Piastri and Norris kept a very, very comfortable lead over everyone else. Piastri managed to get multiple seconds ahead of his teammate and it looked like he was about to cruise to his first proper victory (the Aussie already took a sprint win in Qatar last year, but who really counts those?).
But then it hit the fan. Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton both showed some pretty good pace in P3 and P4, and there was a chance they might attempt a late stage lunge to take second place from Norris. So the team brought Norris in early, which essentially also meant they gave him an undercut on Piastri. And that’s where McLaren made an absolute mess of things. Again.
Piastri realized he was being left out a little longer than Norris, which would somewhat hurt his chances. The team assured him that, quote, “there is no need to worry about Lando”. I’m sure that statement won’t age poorly in any way.
When Piastri went in for his pitstop, he came out behind Norris by quite a significant margin. And as the team was telling him that Norris would let him go by, Norris was storming away and building a gap of five seconds. There was an embarrassing amount of back and forth with the team trying to get their drivers in line with a strategy that was becoming more and more untenable by the minute. Norris made the valid point that Piastri should get closer if he wants the win, Piastri made the fair point that Norris was making it more difficult to get this done with each lap, the team made some very poorly disguised points that Norris needed to slow down to save his tyres, which everyone could see was nonsense.
Ultimately, Norris relented and slowed down to let Piastri by. His “Yeah, you don’t need to say anything” over the radio was very telling. The podium was incredibly subdued and there was a very dimmed atmosphere around both drivers. The PR training had kicked in by the time the interviews began, but I would pay seriously good money to hear the team debrief after this race.
Mad Max: Fury Road
It’s a little unusual to get this far into a race report with so few mentions of Max Verstappen. And that despite it being his second race of the weekend. The Dutchman also took part in the virtual 24 hours of Spa with his iRacing team Team Redline. It meant he didn’t get a lot of sleep, and you’d almost think that had affected him somewhat.
Earlier, I mentioned that Verstappen had to give back second place to Norris at the start. As you can imagine, Verstappen didn’t take that too well and he let his displeasure be known loud and clear. It was the opening salvo for a war of words between him and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase (GP). Verstappen found plenty of things to complain about: the team’s strategy, the FIA rulebook, the tyres, the brakes, the grip, Norris’s tactics, Piastri’s tactics, Hamilton’s tactics, the way the team treated him, the medical delegates, the Game of Thrones series finale, the results of the Euro Cup. Anything that even slightly upset the world champion found its way to his comms.
It got to the point where GP even told Verstappen to shut up and get on with it. So once Verstappen did, he began to chase down Hamilton. This is still Verstappen of course, so his driving was absolutely incredible. Until he got into a significantly less incredible moment. The Dutchman locked up, shot ahead at the corner, made contact with Hamilton and launched himself into the air. Surprisingly, his car was completely fine, though his race was pretty much over after that. The Stewards also took note of the incident and have yet to decide if there’s any follow-up to it.
The 200 podium man
Do you think Hamilton regrets signing with Ferrari yet?
The man who won the previous race was in the mix at the front again this week. Even though he could never really challenge for the win, Hamilton firmly staked his claim to a podium position and was fighting Verstappen tooth and nail for it. And aside from a brief moment where Mercedes prepared him for what it would be like to work with the Ferrari strategists - they actually did a come in-stay out moment!!!! - there really wasn’t much wrong with how Hamilton and Mercedes handled this race. His third place earned him his 200th podium of his career. I’m not really a Hamilton fan, but I have to admit: I’m kinda sad that this didn’t happen a round earlier. It would have been great to see Hamilton pass this milestone at his home race.
His new team Ferrari meanwhile was yet again completely invisible. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished in fourth and sixth, helped somewhat by Verstappen’s attempts at staying airborne for longer than a Boeing plane. But aside from a pinprick attempt by Leclerc to overtake Verstappen, the two Prancing Horse drivers failed to make much of an impression this race. It kicks Ferrari down to third in the standings, behind McLaren, and once again proves that they are probably the fourth fastest team right now.
All in all, this was a race where not a lot of people can look back on with pride. Maybe only Hamilton. Verstappen showed his most childish behavior (not my words, but those of his engineer), McLaren made a complete mess of things, Ferrari was nowhere, Sergio Perez and George Russell struggled to really overcome their qualifying mistakes, and Aston Martin was once again upstaged by Yuki Tsunoda. There’s one more race before the summer break. Let’s hope we see some more quality work there.
| Position | Driver | Gap |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oscar Piastri | - |
| 2 | Lando Norris | +2.141 |
| 3 | Lewis Hamilton | +14.880 |
| 4 | Charles Leclerc | +19.686 |
| 5 | Max Verstappen | +21.349 |
| 6 | Carlos Sainz | +23.073 |
| 7 | Sergio Perez | +39.792 |
| 8 | George Russell | +42.368 |
| 9 | Yuki Tsunoda | +77.259 |
| 10 | Lance Stroll | +77.976 |