BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Lando Norris held off his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in a tense finish to win the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday and boost his Formula 1 title chances heading into the mid-season break.
Norris clung on with worn tires as Piastri loomed behind him in the final laps. He celebrated with a double fist pump on top of his car after claiming McLaren’s 200th F1 win by less than a second to cut Piastri’s standings lead to nine points from 16.
“I’m dead. It was tough, it was tough,” Norris said. “The final stint, with Oscar catching, I was pushing flat out.”
Making the right call
It was a race shaped as much by smart strategy as gritty driving. Norris briefly dropped to fifth on the first lap but made his tires last to stop only once, while Piastri changed tires twice.
Piastri steadily cut into Norris’ lead in the latter stages of the race but the British driver held on with old tires to take the win. Piastri nearly collided with his teammate when he locked up a wheel while trying to pass on the second-to-last lap. Still, it was Norris who held on to have the last word in their title fight as F1 heads into a four-week break.
“Good racing. Good strategy. Good call,” was how Norris summed it up on the radio.
George Russell took third for Mercedes after fighting his way past Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in a contest that earned Leclerc a time penalty for nearly colliding with Russell while defending.
Defending champion Max Verstappen was only ninth after being off the pace all week. He stays third in the standings, but drops to 97 points off leader Piastri in another heavy blow to an already unlikely title defense.
Ferrari frustration
Leclerc started on pole position with hopes of landing Ferrari its first Grand Prix win of the year, but ended up fourth after blaming the team for decisions he said left his car “undriveable.”
“This is so incredibly frustrating. We’ve lost all competitiveness,” he told the team over the radio.
It wasn’t immediately clear what, if anything, Ferrari changed on his car, but Leclerc dropped so far off the pace in his final stint that the two McLaren drivers and Russell questioned what happened to him as they chatted after the race.
A day after calling himself “useless” and questioning whether Ferrari might need to replace him, Lewis Hamilton ended up 12th, exactly where he started. Hamilton never seemed to have the pace to fight for points and was at one stage forced off the track by Verstappen as his old rival overtook him.
Aston’s day
Fernando Alonso took Aston Martin’s best result of the season with fifth on a slow track that suited his car, with Gabriel Bortoleto a surprise sixth for Sauber and Lance Stroll seventh in the other Aston Martin.
Liam Lawson was eighth for Racing Bulls, with Verstappen ninth and Kimi Antonelli 10th for Mercedes.
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