Lando Norris reflected on whether he should have allowed his teammate Oscar Piastri to reclaim victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix but ultimately believed it was the “fair” and “honest” decision.
For 20 laps, Norris debated the move with his team as they aimed for McLaren’s first one-two finish in nearly three years. Despite the internal conflict, Norris was “always quite confident” he would make the right decision.
“I didn’t deserve to win the race,” Norris admitted. “Simple as that. Being in that position was incorrect. If Oscar led the entire race, it wouldn’t be fair for him to just let me pass because I’m fighting for a championship. I didn’t give up the win; I lost it off the line.”
After the race, both drivers acknowledged that McLaren had made their race harder than necessary. Norris was only ahead of Piastri—who secured his maiden win—because McLaren chose to make Norris’ second and final pit stop early to guard against Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, which had recently pitted and received fresh tires.
McLaren’s cautious timing, some argued excessively so, left Norris with a five-second buffer. Team principal Andrea Stella explained that he preferred to manage potential delays during pit stops within the team rather than risk losing track position.
Pitting Lando Norris first, while he was just over a second behind, inevitably placed him ahead of Piastri due to the fresh tires’ increased speed. When the Australian made his final stop a few laps later, it indeed created a tricky situation.
Repeatedly, Norris’ engineer Will Joseph radioed him to follow instructions. Repeatedly, Norris resisted or remained silent. At one point, Joseph had to verify, “Radio check,” to which Norris replied, “Loud and clear.”
When asked why he didn’t reassure the team, Lando Norris responded, “I don’t need to. I know what I’m going to do and not going to do. Of course, I’ll question and challenge it. That’s what I did. I planned to wait until the last corner, last lap. But they mentioned that if a safety car suddenly appeared, I couldn’t let Oscar through, making me look foolish. So, I let him go with two laps to go.”
“You can interpret it however you want based on what you hear and think you know. But I always planned to give it back unless the team changed their mind, and they didn’t, so it’s all good.”
The race’s outcome, coupled with a challenging race for championship leader Max Verstappen—who collided with Hamilton’s Mercedes and finished fifth—allowed Norris to narrow his gap to the Dutchman to 76 points in the drivers’ championship. McLaren is now just 51 points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ standings with 11 races remaining.
Norris admitted that championship considerations made him doubt his decision. “It’s always going to cross your mind. You have to be selfish in this sport sometimes. That’s the priority—thinking of yourself. But I’m also a team player. My mind was racing. I know what we’ve done in the past. Oscar has helped me many times. But this situation was different. We were reversing the positions.”
“Some might say the gap between me and Max is large. But if Red Bull and Max make mistakes like today, and we keep improving, we can turn things around. It’s optimistic and ambitious to say I can close a 70-point gap in half a season, and those seven points I gave away… it’s tough. But I understood the situation and felt confident that by the last lap, I would have done it.”
