The circumstances were dramatic and protracted, but Australia has its fifth grand prix winner at last.
Jack Brabham, Alan Jones, Mark Webber, Daniel Ricciardo and now Oscar Piastri.
Piastri’s maiden victory was notable for how fundamentally unremarkable it was.
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It’s been clear since his debut last year that the Melburnian would be a multiple race winner.
His sprint victory in Qatar last October was the deposit. This weekend he merely proved what we all already knew. Certainly McLaren’s ready supply of OP1 victory hats speaks to the fact the team saw it as a matter of time.
But the circumstances of his victory were far more complicated, with the Hungarian Grand Prix ending in high drama.
Piastri had lost the lead at the second tyre changes to Lando Norris, who’d been given pit stop priority to defend against a possible undercut from behind.
Once catapulted into top spot, Norris was at first unwilling to cede the place back to his teammate.
It took lap after excruciating lap of increasingly desperate pleading from the pit wall to convince him to relent by lifting massively and theatrically on the front straight with three laps to go, allowing Piastri to power past.
It ensured the story of Piastri’s first victory will forever be intertwined with the first flashpoint of his inevitable rivalry with Norris — the only other sure thing of the Aussie’s career.
PIASTRI DESERVED VICTORY
Despite the drama, there can be no mistaking that Piastri thoroughly deserved victory in Budapest.
He’d been on the pace all weekend, qualifying just 0.022 seconds behind Norris to lock out the front row for McLaren.
He then got the better start of the two. From his position on the inside line, he was unafraid to insert himself between Norris and the edge of the track, prying open space for himself on the first apex that allowed him to ease the sister car to the boundary of the circuit on exit to claim the place.
In clear air Piastri controlled the grand prix. By the end of the first lap he was almost 1.5 seconds clear of the field, and slowly he eked out an advantage of almost five seconds over Norris just before half distance.
It was at around the halfway mark that he made one of only two small mistakes, snapping through turn 11 and running off the road in an error that more than halved his margin to Norris.
Norris attempted to capitalise but couldn’t make an impression before Piastri’s dirty tyres eventually cleared up and allowed him to generate a little more breathing room.
While he was less strong in the final stint, Norris was evidently pushing flat out to make a point.
Piastri’s performance was impressive for a couple of reasons.
First, he had Norris’s measure on a weekend the Briton looked a step ahead of the field.
Second and more important is that there was no sign of the single considerable weakness seen in his game last year: race management.
Managing the tyres is the skill Piastri most badly needed to master after his maiden season.
The Hungaroring is a high-degradation circuit, particularly in the warm weather of this weekend, but at no point did Piastri appear to be hamstrung by the circumstances. Instead he excelled in the trying conditions.
“It’s an important milestone in his career,” team boss Andrea Stella told Sky Sports.
“Oscar is learning so rapidly. Last year already in terms of pure pace in a single lap he got there very rapidly.
“He needed to learn a bit how to use the tyres, like on a hot day like today. He did a job that I think last year here in Hungary he was not in a condition to do. He could do that today because he is picking up so rapidly.
“It’s just the ethos: improve every day, take any opportunity to improve, being it positive, being it a missed opportunity.
“Oscar is so strong from this point of view and also so strong mentally.
“I always say he is the youngest and the wisest member of our team.”
Piastri’s first victory was more than just a win; it was the sort of win he needed to prove his career is continuing on its impressive trajectory.
McLAREN MADE TO LOOK SILLY BEGGING FOR MERCY
That Piastri so clearly deserved to win makes the handling of the final stint even more difficult to understand.
McLaren pitted Norris first ostensibly because Lewis Hamilton was an undercut threat from further behind.
But Hamilton stopped on lap 40, and when Norris stopped five laps later, he rejoined with 5.5 seconds still in hand over the Mercedes — a comfortable margin.
Piastri rejoined with more than 3.5 seconds to spare when he stopped after another two laps.
The situation was far from urgent, but McLaren figured it could cover the most vulnerable car first to protect against a slow stop and then figure out the driver order later.
What it got instead was a series of increasingly desperate, sometimes embarrassing messages with which the team attempted to negotiate for Norris to do the right thing.
“Okay, Lando, Oscar has just pitted. He’ll likely come out just behind you. We’d like to re-establish the order at your convenience,” Will Joseph, Norris’s engineer, radioed initially.
But as Norris got faster and faster, the tone became more serious.
“We want to let Oscar through,” Joseph followed.
“You should have boxed him first then, surely,” Norris replied.
“Doesn’t matter,” Joseph said.
“It does for me,” Norris countered.
Then: “I know you’ll do the right thing … just remember every Sunday morning meeting we have.”
Joseph told Norris that “we did this stop sequence for the good of the team,” to which Norris argued that his championship fight should have priority.
“I’m trying to protect you, mate,” Joseph replied. “The way to win a championship is not by yourself. You’re going to need Oscar and you’re going to need the team.”
There was speculation after the race that McLaren had brokered an agreement that whoever led into the first turn would have the right to win the grand prix if the team could secure a one-two finish, though Piastri appeared to deny that there’d been any planned team order along those lines.
“We discussed a lot last night and this morning about how the race would look,” he told Sky Sports. “We were free to race each other and to both try to win the race as long as we finished one and two, and that’s more or less what we did.
“I think a lot of really good planning, a lot of good discussion and a lot of open discussions, and that allows us to have a lot of trust and respect for each other and not have to worry about situations like this.
“Of course it’s never the easiest thing to work out, but I think we’re all respectful and trustful enough to see the reasons why no matter which side we’re on.”
It’s hard not to see Norris’s initial recalcitrance as stemming from his and the team’s litany of missed victory chances this year, with most races since Norris’s Miami maiden having been winnable for the team with better execution.
His desperation to make up for lost time would appear to be an obvious motivation.
Ironically that eagerness to make good on his wasted potential overshadowed the team’s most convincing result in a decade.
WHAT ABOUT THE CHAMPIONSHIP?
There is an alternative perspective to all this: Norris is second in the drivers championship and the most realistic challenger to Max Verstappen.
He started the Hungarian Grand Prix an improbable 84 points behind the Dutchman, but with Verstappen finishing a frustrated fifth, Norris had a golden chance to inflict maximum damage and make his title tilt appear a little more realistic.
He leaves Budapest with the margin reduced to 76 points when it could have been sliced down to 69 points.
Piastri, meanwhile, started the weekend 131 points adrift and leaves a still distant 116 points down.
It’s still unlikely Norris will be able to take the right to Verstappen. A deficit of 76 points or 69 points would require him to make up more than six points a weekend on the Dutchman — in other words, win every race with Verstappen no higher than second.
But unlikely doesn’t mean it’s out of the question.
McLaren proved in Hungary that it has the car not only to match Red Bull Racing but to beat it, at least in some conditions.
RBR, meanwhile, is struggling to squeeze much performance from its latest upgrade, and Verstappen’s frustration is beginning to show cracks in the organisation.
Is it so crazy that Norris could get to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix lamenting the seven points he lost waving Piastri through?
“It hurts,” Norris said. “When you’re leading the race and have to give it back, it hurts, especially because for the drivers championship every point helps.
“I know I’m a hell of a long way behind Max in the championship — I get that; no-one needs to tell me that — but it’s seven points that I threw away today or gave away today.
“We’ll see at the end of the year.”
HOW WILL THIS AFFECT NORRIS’S REPUTATION?
Norris’s missed chances this year will have played a role in his obstinance in the lead. So too will thoughts of the title.
How much will his reputation have been on his mind too?
Norris was criticised in the aftermath of his race-ending crash with Verstappen for being too forgiving of the Dutchman — for being too nice to cut it at the front.
Here was a golden chance to parade his reputation as a killer in the car in the mould of world champions past.
Would Michael Schumacher or Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton roll over easily to a team order?
Max Verstappen certainly wouldn’t.
“Things are always going to go through your mind because you’ve got to be selfish in this sport at times,” Norris said. “You’ve got to think of yourself. That’s priority number one, is think of yourself.”
Instead his rational brain won out — eventually.
It remains to be seen how this affects his reputation inside and outside the team.
While Norris has since insisted that he was always going to swap places, the frantic messages from the team — and some of his replies — certainly suggested the opposite.
It’s not hard to imagine some trust having been broken there. Next time a similar situation arises, the team could find itself second-guessing how its driver will react.
And then there’s his external reputation.
While few doubt he’s among the grid’s fastest drivers, he doesn’t yet have the status to throw his weight around in the way he appeared to be preparing to do.
Some will see the entire saga as petty and petulant, overshadowing not only his teammate’s first win but also his team’s most comprehensively competitive weekend result in years.
“I don’t want to come across like a guy who’s not fair,” Norris told Sky Sports. “Oscar’s done a lot for me in the past. He’s helped me in many races. He drove a better race than I did.
“He deserved it and it was the right thing to do.”
McLAREN NEEDS TO GRAPPLE WITH ITS PLACE IN F1
McLaren might walk away from Budapest thinking that all’s well that ends well.
Having missed so many shots at victory in recent months, that mindset would be justified — for a day or so.
Once celebrations have died down, the team will have to reorganise around a new reality.
McLaren isn’t an aspiring winner. It’s not a sometimes challenger.
In Hungary, as it has been at several other races, it was the quickest car.
This is new territory.
The team is now second and just 51 points behind Red Bull Racing in the constructors championship. The fight is on.
But that means it can no longer afford the sort of strategic ambiguity that afflicted its Budapest performance.
While it got the result it wanted, only a super disciplined effort can hope to overcome Red Bull Racing, and its Hungarian Grand Prix showing proved there’s still room for improvement.
“There is an entire approach to racing that we have with our drivers — team and drivers,” Stella told Sky Sports. “We are in this trajectory together. None of us — the team, Lando, Oscar — can go alone.
“That’s the message that we discussed on Sunday morning.
“With race drivers … you need to refresh this message. That’s why we have this meeting every Sunday, and we are extremely pleased that our drivers are supporting the trajectory of McLaren, which is incredible.
“I don’t know any race driver that when he is leading a race would be happy to say, ‘Oh yeah, of course, why don’t we swap back positions to the previous order?’.
“That’s why we needed to recall our principles. That why we recall the principles on Sunday morning.”
The team has 11 races to prove those principles can hold up in its toughest fight in more than a decade.
Source Agencies
