LANDO Norris held off a late attack from McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri to win the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Norris’ controlled, defensive drive in an intense race, with the two title rivals on divergent strategies, reduces his deficit to Piastri in the championship to nine points heading into Formula 1’s summer break.
Mercedes’ George Russell took the final podium place, passing Charles Leclerc in the closing stages as the Ferrari faded from pole position.
Norris fought back after falling to fifth place on the opening lap by switching to a bold one-stop strategy.
That left Piastri having to come back at him on fresher tyres in the closing laps, and with five laps to go the Australian was on his team-mate’s tail.
Piastri made two bold dives for the inside of Norris at Turn One, but was just too far back to make the move stick on a track where overtaking is notoriously difficult.
Fernando Alonso also chose a one-stop strategy and put in a masterful race to take his and Aston Martin’s best result of the season with fifth place.
His protege Gabriel Bortoleto did the same in his Sauber to take sixth.
Lewis Hamilton, downcast after qualifying 12th in the Ferrari, finished in the same position after a difficult race starting on the hard tyre and trying to go long. The strategy left him in traffic and did not pay off.
How Norris’ Hungary win unfolded
Norris’ hopes of victory appeared to have faded when he attempted to pass Piastri into the first corner after the start but was forced onto a tight inside line, allowing Russell and Alonso to pass him.
With overtaking so difficult, that put Norris on the back foot.
Meanwhile, Piastri was in second place challenging Leclerc, who had held the lead off the line. Russell ran third, ahead of Norris, who had quickly passed Alonso’s Aston Martin.
Leclerc at this stage looked to have the race under control, and was 2.5 seconds ahead of Piastri when McLaren pitted the Australian.
The idea was to ‘undercut’ the Ferrari, but Leclerc responded on the next lap and comfortably managed to retain the position.
At this point, Norris decided to extend to give himself a tyre offset and that plan extended into going for the one stop.
“I didn’t think it would get us the win,” Norris said I thought maybe it would get us into second, I knew if had some clean air an could push I would maybe make it work.”
Norris extended his stint to lap 31, giving him 39 laps to do on a set of hard tyres. Team principal Andrea Stella said that initially McLaren did not know whether they could make the strategy work, but that careful balance between pace and tyre management put Norris in a position to get to the end.
Leclerc was at this stage still in the race, second between the two McLarens, and Piastri negotiated with his engineer, saying he would rather bias his strategy to give himself the best chance to beat Norris, saying he didn’t care about the Ferrari.
Leclerc made his second stop on lap 40, while Piastri waited another five laps for his, to give himself the maximum grip advantage over Norris.
Back on track, Piastri swept around the outside of Leclerc to take second place on lap 51, with 19 laps to go, and set about closing the nine-second gap to Norris while trying not to take too much out of his tyres.
He was within range to be able to use the DRS overtaking aid with five laps to go, but Norris was just able to hold him at bay.
“I’m dead,” Norris said. “It was tough. We weren’t really planning on the one-stop at the beginning but after the first lap it was kind of our only option to get back into things.
“The final stint with Oscar catching I was pushing flat out. Rewarding for that and the perfect result today.”
Piastri said: “I pushed as hard as I could. After I saw Lando going for a one, I knew I would have to overtake on track, which is much easier said than done around here. Today we were just on the wrong side of it.
“He didn’t have a lot to lose. I don’t know if trying to undercut Leclerc was the right call in the end but we can go through it after.”(BBC Sport)