If you didn’t know it before, or you were still
unsure of McLaren’s pace let the 2024 Hungarian grand prix put all the doubts
to rest. A sublime weekend for the Woking based team resulted not only in lock
out of the front row of the grid but a dominant one-two on race day as well.
Lando Norris started on pole, but his
ascendancy was shortlived as he lost the P1 spot to teammate Oscar Piastri. The
Australian driver seemed to have control of events and built a solid four
second gap to teammate Norris. But a mistake from Piastri allowed Norris to
close the gap and sit well within undercut range. An undercut is when the car
behind pits first for fresh tyres and uses that to set a much faster lap time
in comparison to the car ahead, which is still on old rubber. Normally, within
the same team the driver ahead on track gets first service in the pitlane. But
McLaren opted to stop Norris first instead.
And here is where McLaren made a bit of a
strategic mistake. They said that this call was made to cover Lewis Hamilton,
who was running third at the time. But. Hamilton had his hands full of
an over-zealous Verstappen and never quite had the pace to challenge the
McLarens. This makes McLaren’s reasoning a bit non-sensical. What did create is
an unnecessarily prickly situation of Norris ahead of Piastri. Because the team
had given Norris an ‘unfair’ advantage over Piastri they had to engineer a swop
of position in the latter part of the race. Over team radio it didn’t seem that
Norris was particularly amenable to this. And it’s easy to argue for both sides
of this too.
One, Piastri’s mistake allowed himself to fall
within undercut range of Norris. Two, Norris was never under genuine threat
from Hamilton so McLaren’s decision to pit him first was flawed. As a result,
McLaren wanted Norris to clean up the mess they had created. The clock was
ticking on whether Norris would be more the multi-21 version of Seb Vettel (see
Malaysia 2013 saga for context) or would he take the shape of a more obedient
Valtteri Bottas in his Mercedes era? Ask yourself: would peak Vettel, or Verstappen,
or Senna, or Schumacher have swopped position? On the one hand Norris couldn’t
have been blamed for showing some killer instinct. Nice guys just don’t win
championships by saying after you.
But then Formula 1 is a chess match in every
single way. Norris is perhaps smarter for playing the team game and ensuring
himself a unified team that’ll stand behind him if needs be. Let’s not forget
that division within a team, ala McLaren in 2007, can be fatal. Also, when
Vettel pulled the infamous overtake in Malaysia, he was well established at
driver number one in the team. Same with Verstappen at Red Bull with Perez (or
anyone really) and Hamilton at Mercedes when Bottas was in the other car. They’d
already established themselves as bonafede number ones in that team. It isn’t
quite so between Norris and Piastri. McLaren are just starting to win, gaining
serious momentum, and it might be best not to screw it up and distract from
that so early on. But it is a welcome problem for McLaren to have. To have to
manage drivers who are finishing first and second is a far more welcome
headache than trying to get a car to the sharp end of the grid.
Lewis Hamilton’s third place didn’t come
without incident. A battle with Verstappen didn’t deter him though, and it has
simultaneously underlined Mercedes’s progress. Charles Leclerc ran a quiet race
to finish fourth but the same couldn’t be said for Max Verstappen. As the race
went on, so Verstappen became more irate at the handling of his car. The team
radio revealed a more and more unstuck Verstappen as he struggled his way
through the race. Though he ultimately finished fourth it wasn’t without a desperate
move on Hamilton that launched him into the air. It was clear that Verstappen’s
frustration had settled into desperation and the Dutchman was lucky to escape a
post-race penalty for his dam-deer move. He eventually finished fifth overall.
Carlos Sainz was sixth in the other Ferrari
ahead of Checo Perez in seventh. The Mexican driver started 16th
after a qualifying crash. George Russell, who started 17th finished
eighth ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll in ninth and tenth respectively.
If some needed a reprieve after Hungary none will be forthcoming. F1 heads
straight to Belgium for this weekend’s race around the famed Spa-Francorchamps
circuit.
