McLaren Shone in Hungary: Norris Beats Piastri in an Epic Race
BUDAPEST, Hungary – McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown left his team’s motorhome on Sunday evening, passing a throng of journalists eager for team boss Andrea Stella’s assessment. Approximately an hour earlier, the fight for victory between the two McLaren drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, was inches away from a collision on the penultimate lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix, raising heart rates both in the pit wall and in the stands.As has been the norm in the partnership between Brown and Stella at the helm of McLaren, Brown provided the headline, while Stella offered a more detailed analysis of Norris’ victory over Piastri. The message was clear: McLaren has always promised to let its drivers compete, and in Budapest they kept their promise. In a battle as close as Sunday’s, hindsight always gives the loser a route to victory. Norris’s fifth win of the season depended on a one-stop strategy that emerged as the fastest, while Piastri seemed to be at a disadvantage despite employing a two-stop strategy, considered the most favorable before the race.“In case anyone didn’t notice… it was a great race!”
Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing
For Norris, emotions took an opposite direction. After a bad start, his chances of victory seemed nil, and only when his alternative strategy unfolded did confidence begin to grow.“You know, when you lose a race by such a small margin, it’s obviously a bit painful, but I’m sure it was entertaining from the outside. It was entertaining from the inside too, a pretty fun race, all things considered, but obviously, when you’re on the losing side of that battle, it’s a bit difficult”.
Oscar Piastri
“I didn’t really think it was going to work for the majority of that second stint. But with every lap, I gained more confidence that it was going to be closer and closer. So yeah, it’s definitely rewarding.”
Lando Norris
Was the Division of Strategies Fair?
The battle between the McLaren drivers had an added complication from the start due to the presence of Charles Leclerc in pole position. The Ferrari driver led the first corner and initially had the pace to keep Piastri at bay, while Norris fell to fifth place on the first lap before recovering to fourth place on lap 3. McLaren had discussed the possibility of a pre-race pit stop, but favored a two-stop strategy. Furthermore, by initiating pit stops on lap 18 and committing to a two-stop strategy with Piastri, there was the possibility that the new tires fitted to the Australian’s car would offer a performance advantage to overtake Leclerc and take the lead.Stella went on to explain that, by extending Norris’s stop, they did not believe a one-stop strategy was viable. However, he praised Norris for his performance on used tires. Piastri revealed that he was offered a one-stop strategy in the first stint, but doubted it would help due to his battle with Leclerc.Piastri also commented on the one-stop strategy:“Our base strategy today was a two-stop strategy. We didn’t necessarily believe that the one-stop was possible, so with Oscar we tried to follow a good and deterministic two-stop strategy, trying to overtake Leclerc at the first stop. Then we tried to extend [the duration of the second stint] with the second stop to have a delta of [tire performance] to have those few tenths of a second to be able to overtake Leclerc, and this worked.”
Andrea Stella
The key benefit of the one-stop strategy, which perhaps wasn’t fully considered before the race, was the clean air it presented to Norris. While Piastri was stuck behind Leclerc for the first two stints, Norris was able to run alone for most of his race and exploit the true performance advantage that McLaren had at the Hungaroring.“We talked a bit about that before the race, so it wasn’t completely ruled out. In the race they asked me about it, but it’s very difficult to know from the cockpit what’s best to do. When you’re the car behind [like Norris], your risk-reward ratio is always very different. So yes, that always exists. Could we have matched Lando? That is, I suppose, the question to which I have no answer. So I guess that’s the only thing. But we also wanted to try to win the race, and the best way to try to beat Lando is also to try to win the race. That was obviously the intention, but I think we will definitely analyze if there is anything we could have done a little differently”.
Oscar Piastri
When the one-stop strategy was first offered to Norris, it meant staying out longer than he had initially planned on his first set of tires. At that point, he didn’t see the strategy itself as a path to victory, but as a way to unlock other potential benefits if a safety car or virtual safety car allowed him to make a more time-efficient pit stop. Norris continued explaining his perspective:“Lando found himself on a different strategy, and had more clean air, more laps in which he could use the full potential of the car. Oscar spent quite a bit of time behind Leclerc, and this might have cost him a bit of time, but I think both executed their race to the highest standards”.
Andrea Stella
“When Will [Joseph, Norris’ engineer] asked me, ‘What do you think about the one-stop?’ I think at that point, I was already like, seven seconds behind Oscar and eight or nine behind Charles. Not that I thought my race was over, but it was pretty slim that I could at least fight from there, even with a perfect two-stop strategy. So my expectations weren’t high, but I was more relying on a safety car or a [virtual safety car] or something to bring me back into the race, but I had none of that. In the end, I guess it didn’t matter. Will said, ‘What do we think about a one-stop?’ and I said, ‘Let’s do it’. My confidence wasn’t the highest, but it was my best chance to try and do something, and it turned out to be a bit more tricky because it actually allowed me to fight until the end for the victory. I’m still not sure if it was the best strategy, but I think with how difficult it was to overtake, it turned out to be pretty good”.
Lando Norris
Will McLaren Maintain its Harmony?
Divergent strategies led the two drivers to a direct wheel-to-wheel battle in the last three laps of the race. Piastri’s second pit stop meant he had fallen behind Norris on track on lap 45, but his tires, 14 laps younger, allowed him to close a gap of more than 10 seconds in the space of 20 laps. With the use of DRS and a slipstream on the pit straight, Piastri saw a half-chance present itself on lap 69 of 70 and tried to seize the moment. Piastri described the moment:Piastri locked a front tire, but didn’t reach the rear of Norris’s car. Three races earlier, in Austria, Piastri received a warning from the pit wall for a similar incident, but Stella was proud of the way his two drivers approached what could have been a crucial moment in Hungary. Stella praised her pilots:“I think I needed to be at least a couple of tenths closer, which was going to require a mistake from Lando to achieve it. I feel like that was going to be my best opportunity. You never want to try and save it for the next lap and then it never comes. So I thought I’d at least give it a go, and yeah, not quite”.
Oscar Piastri
The question is whether those values can be maintained until the end of the season. With 10 races remaining, perhaps the most potent blows are still being dealt when the two drivers compete wheel to wheel. If a race like the one in Budapest were the deciding factor of the title later in the year, lap 69 might not be so clean and divergent strategies could generate more controversy. But Stella, like Brown, is clear: McLaren is committed to letting its drivers compete.“You know, when you have two great drivers, like Lando and Oscar, competing for a grand prix win in [Formula 1] and competing for the drivers’ championship, it’s always going to be very close. But that was a firm race, it was a fair race at the same time. It was definitely within our principles. We had a small lock-up with Oscar, but at the same time, Lando left some space because he knew Oscar would be on the limit of the braking. We are still very proud of how Lando and Oscar race. I think this is an excellent way to honor Formula 1 racing. These are the values of McLaren”.
Andrea Stella
The competition at McLaren continues, and fans are expecting more exciting battles in the upcoming races.“Well, we are McLaren Racing: we bring the value of racing to Formula 1. We want to offer great racing for Formula 1, we want to give our two drivers the possibility to use and express their talent, pursue their aspirations, their personal and business success, so that they happen within the limits of the team’s interest and fairness, sportsmanship and mutual respect. And for me, this is what I see. When we have a deviated strategy, when we have different options, I think this is part of racing. We want to make sure that neither of the drivers is surprised, and I think that neither of the drivers was surprised. So far, I can only be very grateful for the way Lando and Oscar have interpreted the way we race as a team, as a group that includes the drivers, and I am sure that this will be the same until the end of the season”.
Andrea Stella
