Lando Norris won the Hungarian Grand Prix after starting on pole but losing the lead to his teammate Oscar Piastri on lap one, Sunday afternoon at the Hungaroring. This marks the first time that Norris has won with the No. 1 of World Drivers Champion on the front of his McLaren.
Before the race, the leader and second-place competitor in the points championship were both given three-place grid penalties for impeding during qualifying, with Lewis Hamilton losing his second-place start to ultimately start fourth and Kimi Antonelli falling from fourth to seventh.
Piastri got the drop on Charles Leclerc and followed his teammate in second before taking the lead on the first lap. George Russell had an anti-stall issue at the start of the race and tumbled from his sixth-place start to 21st, the back of the field, minus the Cadillac, on pit lane.
View Price on AmazonPiastri controlled his lead at the start of the race, with the field closely behind. As the McLaren without the upgrades before the summer break, his day would take a turn for the worse when the McLaren garage gave Norris the advantage, with the World Driver Champion debating that he had more speed than his teammate.
During the second round of pit stops, Piastri was brought in to pits first, with Norris given the chance to stretch the middle stint and have fresher tires later in the grand prix. The problem for Piastri is that when he was called to pit on lap 33, it put him out of the pits into traffic, including a group of backmarkers.
Piastri made it up to second but was forced to retire with a gearbox failure on lap 57, bringing out a virtual safety car that assisted his teammate and Lewis Hamilton while hurting championship-leading Kimi Antonelli, who had just pitted two laps earlier and was bargaining with his team to stay out longer as his tires degraded.
Norris finished the race with a 15.080-second lead over Verstappen but was told to race extremely between the lines and not hit any exit curbs, as that was likely what did in Piastri’s gearbox. Hamilton, who was disappointed in losing the pole and being handed his grid-place penalty for impeding Piastri on Saturday, was battling to make it back to the podium when he was hit with a five-second penalty for speeding entering pit lane.
Isack Hadjar, a major player in his teammate P2 finish, held on to finish sixth. Hadjar was able to hold off the McLarens before the first set of pit stops to help Verstappen get back into a striking zone on old tires. When he fell to fourth, he continued to hold up the Ferraris before his childhood hero Hamilton caught him slipping and passed him on the right.
Russell recovered from his first-lap fumble to finish in the points in seventh, still losing ground to Antonelli and Hamilton. Liam Lawson, Nico Hulkenberg and Arvid Lindbald were the final drivers to finish in the points.
Source: roadandtrack.com
