McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri react to what panned out in F1 Hungarian GP, as Andrea Stella gives the team view.
What was looking like a smooth 1-2 finish for McLaren in F1 Hungarian GP got complicated towards the end amid team orders situation which was seemingly created by the team itself. Piastri got off the line well to lead the race from teammate Norris.
The Australian commanded the first stint and also had enough in the second stint until Norris started to catch him. They were both well clear of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, but the pitwall was wary of them catching the McLaren pair.
That is why they altered the strategy call in the last stint which put Norris in the favourable position. The Brit, in fact, extended his run at the front when the whole radio saga kick-started with the McLaren pitwall pleading the Brit to slow down for Piastri.
It took them many laps to do so but Norris finally gave up to allow Piastri register his first F1 win and secure a McLaren 1-2 finish. The Brit expanded on him not losing the win due to the team call, but losing out already at the start of the race.
As any driver Norris was reluctant to give back the place but eventually he played the team game, going by the culture and ethos that team boss Stella stressed about at a stretch in the media briefing. The Italian had full faith in the Brit to come through and play fair.
He also expanded on the various radio messages plus how the strategy came about and how McLaren will handle if in future the fight turns into a world championship tussle. Piastri, meanwhile, had minor worries but knew that the team will manage it.
Thoughts on it –
Norris: “I’m trying to think of a cool word. I don’t know. Just great. Like, it’s been amazing. I don’t know. A very good weekend, all in all, from all of us as a team. Mistake-free. Great pace in the car. Probably this weekend, I think, we can say confidently I think we were the quickest and I think that’s the first time this year I can confidently say that, so amazing. Our first one-two since Monza with Daniel and yeah, an up and down journey. But, you know, since one year ago we were struggling and the turnaround to Miami and from Miami to here. It’s been incredible. So as a weekend, fantastic. And I’m very happy for us as a team and everyone that’s part of it to reward them with something like this. I mean, I didn’t give up the race win. I lost the race win off the line. so I know everyone is going to want to say that as a story that I gave up the race when I didn’t. I boxed first and naturally you’re always going to undercut. So the team gave me this position and I gave it back. Nothing more than that.”
Piastri: “Very [different from sprint win], I would say. I think the Sprint win… It was always a bit awkward, in my opinion. It’s a win, but not really a win. This is much more of a proud moment for me than winning the Sprint. Of course, it was a special moment at the time, but now to have no questions, no question marks over whether I’m a race winner or not is a very nice feeling to have. And yeah, the emotion is definitely different.”
Radio calls, concern –
Norris: “I mean, things are always going to go through your mind because, you know… You’ve got to be selfish in this sport at times. You’ve got to think of yourself. That’s priority number one, is think of yourself. I’m also a team player, so my mind was going pretty crazy at the time. I know what we’ve done in the past between Oscar and myself. He’s helped me plenty of times… I think this is a different situation. This is not someone helping one another. I was put into a position, and we were undoing that position change. But I mean, I’m also, and I get it, and I know a lot of people are going to say, like, the gap between me and Max is pretty big, 60, 70, 80 points or something.
“You know, if Red Bull and Max make the mistakes like they did today and continue to do that, and as a team we continue to improve and have weekends like we’ve had this weekend, we can turn it around. And it’s still optimistic. It’s still a big goal to say, yeah, we can close 70 points and as a driver, I can close 70 points in half a season. And then when you’re thinking of the seven or six points that I give away, then… It crosses your mind for sure. So it was not easy, but I also understood the situation I was in and I was quite confident always by the last lap I would have done it.”
Piastri: “I mean, I’m sure it’s something we’ll discuss as a team. You know, the information I had at the time was Lando was boxing early to cover Lewis, and I was going long to cover Max, essentially, because I knew that he’d stop later, and I think we were just being very safe. Of course, that naturally gave Lando an undercut, maybe made things a little bit more complicated than it needed to be. But yeah, I’m sure that’s something we’ll go through.
“I don’t think I was really concerned. The only thing I was concerned about a bit was if there was a Safety Car, then it would have taken the situation out of our hands, would have taken the control out of our hands. So that was really the only thing I was a bit concerned about. But, you know, we’d spoken about it at the timing of the stop that we would sort it back out. And, yeah, I mean, I had full trust in everyone in the team, including Lando, that we would make that happen.”
Being more selfish, title implications –
Norris: “It depends. I mean, I’ve done this for… I don’t know. I think I was put in this situation and it’s not my fault that I was leading the race in a way. Simply the team should have just boxed Oscar first and we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. So, it’s not that. I think just as a team, maybe we could have done things slightly differently and I’m sure we’ll talk about it. But at the same time… This guy here deserved to win today. He did an amazing job. He got me off the line and yeah, that’s a very special feeling winning your first race and I say first race because I think you’ll agree that it’s his first race win and not a Sprint race. So yeah, I’ll let him enjoy it. And you know, for us as a team and to have the win is an incredible weekend for all of us. And no. I mean… I didn’t lose the win there. I lost the win off the line. You know, I had a terrible, not even a terrible start, just a bad start. Something happened on my second shift and I lost all my momentum.
“Oscar got to the inside and that was it. That was that. So, you know, I got put into the lead rather than wanting to. I feel like we made things way too hard for ourselves and way too tricky for ourselves. We should have just boxed Oscar first and things would have been simple, but they gave me the lead and I gave it back. So I shouldn’t have won today. I didn’t deserve to win because of my start and Oscar’s good start and that’s that. So I don’t feel like… I know I was in that position for a while and 16, 17 laps or whatever, It’s hard when you’re in that position to give it back because you’re there. And you’re there and of course that went through my mind, seven points that I’m going to lose. But I think the real fact is I shouldn’t have almost had them in the first place. I shouldn’t have had them in my hands. So the team were right. And I stand by what they said.”
Why didn’t confirm early on that you’ll let through –
Norris: “I don’t need to. I know what I’m going to do and what I’m not going to do. Of course, I’m going to just question it and challenge it, and that’s what I did. Yeah. I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner. But then they said if there was a Safety Car all of a sudden, and I couldn’t let Oscar go through, then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot. Yeah, then I was like, ‘yeah, it’s fair point’. And I let him go, two to go or something. And straight away, I let him go. So yeah, I mean, that’s just your opinion of what you hear. But that’s the same with all sports. You can make what you will of what you hear and what you think you know and that kind of stuff. But I know that I always was going to give it back unless they changed their mind on what they were saying. And they didn’t. So all good.”
Tough call needed –
Norris: “I think there’s just a difference of simply just deserving to win a race and not deserving to win. I didn’t deserve to win the race today. Simple as that. So the fact I was in that position was incorrect. I think that was a mistake from us as a team. I shouldn’t have been in this position. And it was a strategic way to just play our race. So it gave me hope and it gave me that position of, ‘oh, I’m here now’. But I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I’m not going to talk about it because I shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t deserve to win. End of story from that side. But yes, it’s something we always talk about before every race is our trust in one another, our honesty we have as a group. I think that’s something that’s allowed us to catch others so quickly to perform and outperform others so quickly to develop the car quicker.
“As a team, I think we have and have shown plenty of times between drivers, whether it has been Carlos and myself, Daniel and myself, Oscar and myself, that when things do go one another’s way, we’re there to help one another, you know? And today is a different day. It’s not because strategically something’s really happened and you’re kind of just letting someone pass or something’s going that way it’s that I shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. I shouldn’t have been given that hope of I’m here, I’m leading a race. So I don’t think it’s a fair thing. But of course we’re going to discuss it and there’s going to be times maybe in the future where things are like that. But if Oscar’s led the whole race, I don’t want him just to… It’s not fair, and I don’t think that’s how it should work, that he should just let me pass for me to win because I’m fighting for a championship. Maybe I’ll ask Oscar, maybe he will! Maybe he’d let me pass! But today was his, and that should be it. It wasn’t my race today. He drove better, and he got a good start, and that was that, so… Yeah, like I said, something we’ll speak about as a team and we speak about all the time. Something we’re good at and something we’ll continue to do good at.”
Allowed to race –
Norris: “Yeah, we were allowed to race. Maybe something would have changed in certain positions, but we’ve always been allowed to race. 99% of our time together we’ve been allowed to race. There’s been a couple times when it’s just been better to hold position and it’s not been worth anything differently, especially when we’re fighting for, you know, last year we were fighting for ninth and tenth and stuff like that, you know, for any driver, it doesn’t really matter so much. On a day like today, obviously, it feels better or worse either way, but we’ve always been allowed to race as McLaren. We’ve always been able to have those opportunities, and I think mainly because we’ve always been honest with each other, we’ve always respected each other well. I think as a teammate, I want to… For myself, I feel like I’ve always been good and honest and happy and respectful for who I work with and how we can work well as a team. I believe it’s a good trait from my side and it’s helped me plenty of times in the past. So, yeah, we are allowed to race and into the future that will continue to be the same, I’m sure.”
Why last stint didn’t work –
Piastri: “Yeah, I mean, I think the whole race, we were very evenly matched. I think the dirty air made a big difference. I think where I was in the last stint, I don’t think it made that much of a difference. I think ultimately, I just wasn’t quite as quick as I needed to be in the last stint. So I think that’s something that I that I want to improve and, you know, I’m very, very happy with the result, of course, but in terms of leaving the weekend, you know, with the question of am I fully satisfied with my performance today? No, I’m not. And there’s still things I want to improve. Yeah, I mean, I think track position made a very big difference today. And I think that’s why having the start I did was so critical. Yeah, I think just ultimately, I didn’t quite have the pace that I wanted in the last thing. And I still need to go and assess why that was the case.”
Faith in Norris –
Stella: “No, I know Lando enough. I know that when you have a race driver and you deal with a race driver, sometimes you have to communicate to all the sides that exist inside a race driver. But I know well enough that inside Lando, we have the race driver and the team player. These two elements came along perfectly today to generate what was the right thing to do for the team, for Oscar and for Lando. We are very happy from this point of view, that there is no race driver that is such by nature, that would say ‘okay, when are we going to do that’, like they always want that they are P1 in a Formula 1 Grand Prix, they all think…that maybe the team will let me get it but we were very clear already before the race. So it’s a situation that I think proves, it shows and it demonstrates once again what it means to be part of the McLaren Formula One team. These are the values. Sometimes they conflict with some instincts of a race driver.
“But the values, the culture, and the good for the team stays always the most important thing. As for Lando, he’s a race driver. Mention to me a race driver who would have not done it. I think you can mention many who would have not done it until Lap 70. I would be extremely concerned if Lando had not demonstrated, ‘I’m a race driver’ because that’s the ethos you need to fight hard, like you need to fight when you are in contention with the likes of Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, and Oscar himself. So it demonstrated the ethos, the spirit of the race driver, but I think it would be unfair, it could be something that is entertaining to talk about the somehow controversial aspects, but it would be unfair not to talk about the resolution, which happened according to our way of going racing.
“Regarding the delay, I guess as a race driver, Lando always wanted to show that he was in condition to win today. But we knew he was in condition to win, like Oscar was in condition to win. So I guess he was trying to make the point, which is also why Will said we understand your point and we genuinely understood his point. But the important thing is that when he realised that there was a team player role to be played, then he did it.”
Why go for complicated strategy to put such situations –
Stella: “We knew that, by going first with Lando, that could have been the situation, but we wouldn’t have done it if we weren’t sure that this would be fixed. I think today, because we are at the Hungaroring and because it was so hot, there were two variables that we really wanted to get right. The first one, we didn’t want to pit too early because the tyres were degrading a lot. We didn’t want to run out of tyres, should Verstappen become a problem at the end of the race. Therefore, we just wanted to delay the stop as much as possible. The second element is that you can have a problem at the pit stop. So you need to go safe from a pitstop point of view, or do you want to pit only when you have three seconds? Because then you know what happens – all the pressure goes on the pit crew. I don’t want, in a race like today, that the responsibility goes to the pit crew.
“I’d rather take the responsibility of the pitwall and secure the 1-2 and then manage the situation between the pitwall and the drivers – because we talked about the situation and we know how we go about the situation. This is what I am saying, we just did not wished to have a situation at the pit stop where there is a problem with the but, there’s a problem with the execution that puts us behind a Mercedes or Ferrari. We have seen with Verstappen today, what can happen. Verstappen would have had the tyres much fresher than the guys ahead. So I think we would be talking something else if that was the case like it happened to Verstappen. As to why we didn’t pit Oscar quicker after the second stint, it was because his pace was still reasonable.
“And like I said, it goes back to making sure that the tyres don’t degrade at the end of the race. Now we see that the tyres were actually easier than we thought. But that was not a given. I know that for the media, for watching on TV, this becomes a story. But for us, internally, this becomes part of the way we go racing. That’s why we invest so much in culture, in values, and in the mindset, because we want to be able to manage the situation if we want to be in the championship with Lando, with Oscar, and with McLaren.”
Pre-race discussions, can do better –
Stella: “We have discussions with our race drivers every race. The discussion is about our principles, it is very difficult to manage Formula 1 races if you only talk about rules, like the car ahead has priority to stop, you really risk…or box yourself into a problem like every driver desperately trying to be ahead in the first corner because then they want priority. We talk about our principle of going racing, just one principle, I don’t want to disclose too much, but this one principle is simple: the interest of the team comes first. If you mess up on this matter, you cannot be part of the McLaren Formula One team. There are some principles and then we refer to some of our ways which we corroborate the messages, for instance, we use in case we need to solve situations like this and that’s what we did for the race. I think that it would be arrogant that we take this very positive outcome and we don’t look at the opportunities to do better. But I would be a little careful in thinking, ‘oh yeah, we should have stopped at a different sequence’, or we should have stopped earlier.
“Because there are, like I said before, there are some potential risks in doing so that we definitely wanted to exclude today. At no point the car, for instance for a pit stop problem, should fall behind the traffic of Hamilton and Ferrari. So we needed to manage some other problems. Or I didn’t want to put too much pressure on the pit crew. I’d rather take the pressure and resolve these things with the driver. We are the people that are most responsible in this deal. I‘d rather deal with that. But I think you make a very good point. Like we said after Silverstone, or like we say after very positive outcomes, we do have to take every opportunity to improve. But in terms of the timing, we need to look back at the race and we do it like we always do, in a very calm way, applying our culture. We see where we could have done better.”
Drivers situation –
Stella: “Well, I think the two drivers were very balanced. And today, also in judging the pace, you need to be careful because basically with these tyres today, in these conditions, you couldn’t push all the way, flat out. So you sort of needed to pick where you control your pace. But in fairness, I have to say that today the two drivers looked very similar. And I would invite you to look at what happened last year where Oscar really struggled to control race pace because this gives a sense of how much he has improved in these 12 months in terms of managing tyres in a race stint and in a high degradation situation. Last year in Hungary was a bit of a turning point, in terms of that becomes our main opportunity with Oscar and there’s been a lot of good work.
“I think when you have Oskar and Lando, (8:24) we are in the lucky enough position that we don’t really need to decide who is the number one driver, which is a way of simplifying things for some people like myself and it’s a way to frustrate the entire team, the ambition and the way we go racing which is deep in our ethos. We race fair and if one of the two drivers gains on merit a result, this is protected.
“Maybe, you know, if it’s the last couple of races and there’s a strong championship interest for one of the two drivers, we may revise this. But what I’m expecting is that if the other driver comes to me and says, ‘if you need my help with the other driver, because he is in the championship competition’, I’m available. And I think you build this ethos if you manage race like today in a fair way, like I think we have done. This may give a lot of material for rumours and kind of media. That’s fair enough, that’s racing. To be honest, I enjoy this thing as a spectator or as a fan when these things were happening even when I was not in Formula 1. That’s fair enough, but please acknowledge that we just did what was fair today. And this is what I want the entire team at McLaren to realise and hopefully our fans as well.”
Here’s win for Oscar Piastri: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-hungarian-grand-prix-piastri-crosses-the-line-to-seal-his-maiden-grand-prix-victory.1805203945193118517
Here’s how F1 Hungarian GP panned out
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