Lando Norris takes victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix

This Sunday, British McLaren driver Lando Norris won the Hungarian Grand Prix at the expense of his teammate and world championship leader, Australian Oscar Piastri, reducing the gap between them in the standings to just nine points.

English Mercedes driver George Russell completed the podium in a race in which Charles Leclerc's Ferrari—which held pole position—suffered more than expected from tire degradation and his team's erratic strategy, finishing fourth at the Hungaroring, while Spaniard Fernando Alonso showed his veteran prowess and achieved a more than creditable fifth place with his Aston Martin.

The negative note was again played by both the Dutchman Max Verstappen (Red Bull), who started eighth and finished ninth, and the British Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari), who failed to improve his modest twelfth position on the grid, a result that takes on greater importance after the statements he made on Saturday in which he opened the door to leaving the team.

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Spaniard Carlos Sainz barely survived with his Williams on a track that the Madrid-born driver himself acknowledged was the one they were worst at so far this year, finishing 14th, while Argentine Franco Colapinto, who made the most of both stops, finished 18th after starting fourteenth, although he at least had the consolation of beating his teammate, Frenchman Pierre Gasly.

With the drop in temperatures setting the tone from the start of the day, Leclerc took a comfortable lead from the start, while Russell and Alonso surprised a timid Norris in the first corners, putting the Mercedes driver on the podium and the Spaniard provisionally fourth.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Bortoleto overtook Max Verstappen and then Lance Stroll after the red lights, while Sainz did the same with Hamilton, moving into twelfth place. This marked the first surprises on a track that was extremely difficult for overtaking.

However, after that exciting start, Norris managed to overtake Alonso, trying to make up for lost ground against Russell and, especially, at the expense of Oscar Piastri, who was trying to increase his lead in the World Championship standings.

In fact, Alonso kept managing his tires, creating a significant bottleneck from fifth place to opt for the one-tire-change strategy, while the majority of the grid began to parade through the pit lane from lap 15.

With this equation, Alonso climbed to second place in those early stages, with Lando Norris leading the race from lap 22, opting for the same one-wheel-change strategy. However, Leclerc, Piastri, and Russell all regained the lead over the Spaniard as the tires began to warm up, and the battle between the two McLarens and the leaders of Ferrari and Mercedes became clearer at the top of the field.

By lap 32, Norris was the last of the favorites to return to the pits, allowing Leclerc to retake the lead while Piastri gradually closed the gap on the Monegasque driver's Ferrari.

As the laps went by, Verstappen and Hamilton tried to sweeten their classification by recovering positions in the anonymous section of the grid, even getting into a duel between them, emulating past times, with the Dutchman taking over the Briton in the fight for eleventh position (11th to 12th), although both were gradually cooking up the improvement halfway through the race.

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Just past the halfway point of the race, Leclerc surprised everyone with his second pit stop on lap 41, which upset the scoreboard for Piastri, who had taken the lead, and Norris, who had moved into second, while Verstapen took a breather on the hard tires, pushing hard on the track with a surprising provisional fifth place.

It was Piastri who made his first move in this particular strategy battle, returning to the McLaren pit on lap 46, leaving Norris in the lead and Leclerc in second. However, what seemed like a risky gamble by the Frenchman ended up being a good option, as five laps later, Piastri overtook the driver of a Ferrari that was beginning to struggle on the track, while Norris, with just one stop, awaited instructions from the team.

With ten laps remaining, the fight was centered between Piastri's pursuit of Norris at the top of the race—who maintained a balsamic gap of three and a half seconds—and the battle for the podium between Russell and Leclerc, which the Mercedes driver secured after sticking his nose out over the seams of the Prancing Horse on this circuit.

In the end, Piastri tried to overtake Norris in the final laps in a heart-stopping battle that ended with the Englishman winning, narrowing the standings to just nine points, 284 for the Australian and 275 for the Briton, with three weeks to go until the next race in the Netherlands from August 29 to 31.

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