Lando Norris ultimately complies with McLaren team order to cede the lead - and the win - to Oscar Piastri, but only after a series of increasingly stern commands; frustrated Max Verstappen went airborne in clash with Lewis Hamilton, who finishes third
Monday 22 July 2024 06:16, UK
Oscar Piastri won a highly dramatic and controversial Hungarian Grand Prix for his first full win in Formula 1 after team-mate Lando Norris eventually heeded pleading messages from the McLaren pit wall to cede a lead he had inherited through their pit-stop strategy.
In a gripping and increasingly contentious 70-lap race, which also saw old rivals Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen collide late on in a scrap over third place, Piastri overtook the pole-sitting Norris at the start and appeared to be impressively cruising towards his first grand prix win on just his 35th start.
But the McLaren drivers found their positions reversed for the start of the final stint after the team made the tactical call to pit Norris first to ensure he did not lose second place to Hamilton, who had stopped again for fresh tyres several laps earlier and was lapping quickly behind.
Piastri was pitted two laps later and re-emerged on track behind Norris as the two laps his team-mate had spent on new, faster tyres meant he had gained the leading track position.
McLaren though planned to shift the order back so not to disadvantage Piastri and duly informed Norris that he needed to cede position to the Australian "at your convenience".
But high drama and uncertainty quickly unfolded as the Norris instead maintained the lead for 20 more laps into the race's closing stages.
From what were initially polite to increasingly stern radio messages from his race engineer Will Joseph that he needed to move over in the interests of the team to ensure fairness, Norris finally slowed down and relinquished the lead on the pit straight with three laps to go as Piastri moved back ahead to close out the win.
"I know what I'm going to do, I know what I'm not going to do," insisted Norris afterwards.
"Of course, I'm going to question it and challenge it, and that's what I did.
"It was not easy, but I also understood the situation I was in and I was quite confident always by the last lap I would have done it."
Behind McLaren's dominant, albeit ultimately tense, one-two, Hamilton finished third for his second consecutive podium despite a lap-63 collision with Verstappen when the old title rivals went duelling into Turn One.
Despite making contact and the Red Bull driver briefly going airborne, both cars still made to the finish - although Verstappen dropped behind Ferrari's Charles Leclerc into fifth place.
It capped what an ultimately miserable afternoon for the world championship leader, whose race was peppered by regular angry and frustrated radio exchanges with his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase.
Hamilton and Verstappen escaped any punishment for the incident in a post-race investigation, with stewards ruling "no driver was predominantly to blame".
Carlos Sainz took sixth in the second Ferrari after losing ground at the start to team-mate Leclerc.
While the race panned out particularly badly for Red Bull's championship leader - with Verstappen having now gone three races without a win for the first time since 2021 - there was some relative positivity for the team in the fact that under-pressure Sergio Perez drove a strong race from 16th on the grid to finish seventh.
But McLaren, who have moved ahead of Ferrari into second in the Constructors' Championship, still took a significant haul of 27 points out of Red Bull's lead in the standings and are now just 51 points adrift with 11 races still to go in 2024.
Norris, meanwhile, trims his deficit to Verstappen in the Drivers' Championship from 84 to 76 points.
The margin would have been seven points fewer had he not ultimately heeded team orders.
George Russell started and finished one place behind Perez in the second Mercedes for eighth after his own Q1 exit had left him with it all to do from 17th.
RB's Yuki Tsunoda and Aston Martin's Lance Stroll rounded out the points finishers in ninth and 10th places respectively.
On a Hungaroring weekend where they have absolutely dominated the timesheet to underline their credentials as a serious threat to championship leaders Red Bull over the remainder of this season, a team orders row had appeared the last thing that was likely to overshadow McLaren's afternoon as they looked to close out their first one-two since the 2021 Italian GP.
At the start, Norris had immediately lost the advantage of pole for the second time in four races as a slightly superior start from second-placed Piastri moved the Australian ahead down the inside of the sister car into Turn One.
Norris also entered Turn Two behind Verstappen, although the Red Bull driver was too soon told to give the position back as he had gained it by running wide through the run-off area on the outside of the McLarens before returning to the track.
Piastri, already an F1 winner from last year's Qatar GP shorter-form Sprint, proved an accomplished front-runner in the race's first half and led Norris by 3.5s by the time the second-placed McLaren pitted for his first stop at the end of lap 17.
At one stage in the second stint that lead had grown to almost five seconds, although an off-course moment at Turn 11 when the McLaren would have picked up dirt on its tyres cost Piastri momentum in the laps that followed and meant Norris was back to within two seconds behind him when the pit-wall call came for the second McLaren to pit first again.
With the advantage of fresher and therefore faster tyres, Norris gained track position over Piastri by the time the Australian stopped two laps later on lap 47.
That is when the drama truly began to unfold.
On lap 49, Norris was informed of the situation and told to give the place to Piastri "at your convenience".
Piastri, who had run wide again on his return to the track to lose some more time to his team-mate, was then soon told in turn: "Once you get to Lando, we will swap the positions but we want to avoid Lando giving up a lot of race time."
But rather than getting closer together as McLaren hoped, Norris actually increased his lead out to six seconds.
Sensing the developing problem with the laps running out, Norris was then told by his race engineer on lap 61: "Ok Lando, 10 laps to go. We think both cars are using their tyres too much. Just remember every single Sunday morning meeting we have."
Norris replied: "Yeah, well tell him to catch up then, please."
Having initially adopted the softer, more subtle approach with the Briton over a radio, a firmer-sounding Joseph then returned two laps later to say that, with Piastri unable to close up, Norris had duly "proved your point".
Three laps later and the messaging ramped up in its urgency, with Joseph insisting: "The way to win a championship is not by yourself, it's with the team.
"You're going to need Oscar, and you're going to need the team."
It was when Norris was next told that sudden Virtual Safety Car, when cars can't overtake and have to run to a controlled speed, might mean he ran out of time to perform the switch that the race leader began to slow down.
It was on the pit straight at the start of the 68th lap that Norris backed out of the throttle, allowing Piastri to catch up and swiftly moving past, with the now-second-placed Briton simply saying on team radio: "You don't need to say anything."
All the while as that drama was unfolding for the win, the battle for the final podium position faced a similarly tense showdown as an increasingly-exacerbated Verstappen chased down old rival Hamilton for third on fresher tyres.
Having been undercut by Mercedes at the first round of stops, Verstappen had already failed in one attempt to overtake the seven-time champion earlier in the race around the outside into Turn Three.
In a change of strategy, Red Bull delayed Verstappen's final stop compared to the cars ahead of him and he rejoined on track behind both Hamilton and Leclerc - but with the advantage of fresher tyres for the final 21 laps.
While he quickly picked off the Ferrari, Hamilton again proved another matter.
At the start of lap 63, Verstappen sensed a gap down the inside of the Mercedes into the first turn and duly went for it.
But disaster struck as, locking his car's front brakes, the Red Bull left-rear tyre tagged with Hamilton's front and the Dutchman briefly went airborne with four wheels off the ground before bouncing back down on the track and going into the run-off area, where he was re-passed by Leclerc.
Verstappen blamed Hamilton for the incident over team radio and then afterwards claimed the Briton had moved under braking once he had started his attempted overtake "by keeping turning right".
Hamilton, though, described it as "a racing incident", which the stewards ultimately agreed with, even though they also suggested the Briton "could have done more to avoid the collision" too.
The action continues next weekend with the final race before F1's summer break, the Belgian Grand Prix. You can watch every session from Spa-Francorchamps live on Sky Sports F1 from July 26-28. Stream every F1 race and more with a NOW Sports Month Membership - No contract, cancel anytime
