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Oscar Piastri Gets Maiden F1 Win at Hungary

Relations in McLaren F1 Team might be a bit tense after the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Oscar Piastri won the his first career Formula One grand prix at the Hungaroring after Lando Norris listened to team orders at the end of the race to allow his teammate to win.

“This is really the day I dreamed up as a kid, standing on top of an F1 podium,” Piastri said. “Obviously, a bit complicated at the end, but put myself in the right position at the start. Thank you to the team for the amazing effort, amazing car. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to race with McLaren. So, I can’t thank them enough for giving me the opportunity to be in F1.”

Lewis Hamilton collected his 200th career F1 podium after holding off Max Verstappen, who made contact with the Mercedes in the closing laps. Verstappen fell to fifth behind the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.

Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez, George Russell, Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll rounded out the top 10.

Prior to lights out, Norris’ team scrambled to fix a discovered throttle issue on the grid, and team mechanics and engineers were able to make the repair in time for the start of the race.

Piastri got off to a lightning start from second as the two McLarens and Verstappen from third went three wide into turn 1 off the start, and Verstappen went wide to avoid colliding once more with his championship rival Norris.

The move gained Piastri early control of the lead and allowed him to start gapping the field.

Verstappen settled into second, but a looming FIA investigation for leaving the track and gaining an advantage forced the two-time world champion’s hand to give second back to Norris.

Try as he might, Verstappen pressured Norris for second, but he eventually fell out of DRS range and continued on early in third briefly.

Hamilton was the first to pit in the first cycle of pit stops and allowed the winner of the previous British Grand Prix to perform the undercut on Verstappen for third.

By the halfway mark on lap 35, Verstappen made up time on Hamilton on older, hard compound tires and looked to make the pass for third after a lock up by Hamilton’s Mercedes in turn 1. However, Verstappen ran wide once more in turn 2 and had to make up the gap once more.

Meanwhile up front, Piastri originally had a 4-second lead over his teammate, but he went wide out of turn 4 and allowed Norris to close in on his McLaren teammate to 1.3 seconds, just outside of DRS range.

Piastri’s eventually fluctuated back up to 2 seconds before Norris pitted ahead of Piastri to presumably cover Hamilton.

Instead, Norris undercut Piastri in the pits and gained a 3.5-second lead out of the pits. The team informed Piastri that they allowed him through for the lead if he caught Norris.

Verstappen was last of the leaders to pit and was able to pass Leclerc and, once again, tried to pass Hamilton. But on lap 63, Verstappen drove too deep into turn 1 and made contact with Hamilton, going airborne and continuing on in fifth under pressure from Sainz.

“He sent it up the inside,” Hamilton said. “I stayed still. Then, he clipped the wheel and went over. So, I think [it’s a] racing incident.”

“On a day where you’re already not the quickest, I think we should have done a better job with the strategy,” Verstappen said. “The first one (pit stop), to be undercut there, I was not happy with it, but it can happen. You get caught out. Then, of course, I get stuck a very long time. I lose a lot of lap time trying to fight with Lewis. Fair enough. Then, they leave me out again thinking that we can extract our pace, but then, I get stuck behind back markers where they were doing quite ok lap times. So for me to close in on them within two seconds with old tires, you lose a lot of grip. So even by staying out and basically trying to create your advantage at the end, I couldn’t extract my full pace as well. So again, that was just a bad call.”

Verstappen was summoned by the stewards post-race.

Meanwhile up front, the situation with McLaren became extraordinary as the team implored Norris to give the position back as Piastri ran well ahead of Hamilton in third.

“Well tell him to catch up then, please,” Norris said over the radio.

His race engineer, almost threateningly, demanded him to give it up because he needs to keep his team behind him, and with three laps to go, he finally obliged to let his teammate win.

“The team asked me to do it, so I did it, and that’s it.” Norris explained in his podium interview.

“The longer you leave it, the more you get a bit nervous, but it was well executed by the team,” Piastri said. “I think it was the right thing. I put myself in the right position at the start, and with the different strategy we had, yes, my pace probably wasn’t as quick as I would’ve liked in the last stint, but I was still in the right position to make it happen.”

The Alpine of Pierre Gasly was the only retirement with a suspected hydraulic leak.

There were no safety cars during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Verstappen’s points lead narrowed to 76 points over Norris in the drivers’ standings after the first race of the second half of the season at Hungary, and with near maximum points for the day, McLaren moves to only 51 points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ standings.

Hungarian Grand Prix Results

The next stop of the F1 calendar is next week at the Belgian Grand Prix. Coverage begins on Sunday, July 28 at 9 a.m. ET provided by ESPN.

Wyatt Watson has followed NASCAR closely since 2007. He joined Frontstretchas a journalist in February 2023 after serving in the United States Navy for five years as an Electronic Technician Navigation working on submarines. Wyatt writes breaking NASCAR news and contributes to columns such as Friday Faceoff and 2-Headed Monster. Wyatt also contributes toย Frontstretch'sย social media and serves as an at-track reporter, collecting exclusive content for Frontstretch.

Wyatt Watson can be found on Twitter @WyattGametime


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gbvette62

Three races in a row without a win seems to be taking it’s toll on Verstappen. The constant whining on the radio and the second overly ambitious failed dive bomb overtaking move in the last three races, has him looking like the Verstappen of 4 or 5 years ago, the one we were told was gone, that he was a grown up now.