Oscar Piastri claimed his first-ever Grand Prix victory at the Hungaroring, leading home a McLaren one-two after Lando Norris obeyed team orders. Max Verstappen threw away a place on the podium after a kamikaze lunge on Lewis Hamilton.
Norris’ pre-race preparations were interrupted by a throttle problem ahead of the green lights, and after some stellar work by the McLaren crew, the Brit faced a new threat after the formation lap. Piastri enjoyed a lightning-fast launch, seizing the inside on the run down to Turn One.
The Aussie escaped lap one with the lead, but the drama unfolded behind him. Verstappen made it three wide on the outside of Norris and ran out of room in the process, taking to the run-off area. When he merged back onto the tarmac, he was in second place.
When the pack settled down, Piastri stretched his lead to over three seconds, and when Lewis Hamilton triggered the undercut on lap 16, both McLaren cars were able to respond and hold their positions.
Verstappen, however, was not so lucky and after extending his opening stint to create a bigger tyre offset, the Dutchman emerged from the pit exit seven seconds behind Hamilton, who was running a net P3 after demonstrating mighty pace during the opening exchanges.
On lap 31, Piastri’s lead had stretched to over 4.3 seconds, but after an off-track excursion at Turn 11 on lap 34, Norris trimmed that down to under 1.5 seconds over the course of five tours around the Hungaroring. All the while, Hamilton and Verstappen scrapped tooth and nail in the battle for P3.
As the final round of pit stops played out, Norris was brought in to cover off the threat of Hamilton, but when Piastri emerged from his stop two laps later, the long-time race leader was staring at the rear of his colleague, who ran three seconds up the road.
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