Norris edges Piastri to win F1 Hungarian GP
Baku, August 4, AZERTAC
Lando Norris used a bold one-stop strategy to hold off McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri by just 0.7 seconds to win Sunday's Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, Xinhua reported.
Norris began the race at the Hungaroring from third on the grid, but dropped to fifth at the start after being squeezed by George Russell and Fernando Alonso, with surprise polesitter Charles Leclerc leading the field ahead of Piastri in second.
Faced with losing more ground to Piastri in the Drivers' Championship standings, Norris pivoted from a planned two-stop strategy to just one stop on lap 31. That move proved decisive, as it saw him emerge at the head of the field once the other frontrunners on more conventional strategies had made their second stops.
Piastri then swept around the outside of a fading Leclerc on Lap 51, and set about closing the nine-second gap to Norris, whose tyres were 14 laps older than the Australian's.
Piastri got within DRS range of Norris with five laps to go, and attempted an inside move on Norris at Turn 1 on the penultimate lap, locking up his tyres and narrowly avoiding contact.
Despite heavy pressure from his teammate, Norris kept his head to keep Piastri at bay on a circuit where overtaking is difficult, and ultimately saw out his fifth win of the season, and his third in the last four races.
"I'm dead," Norris said afterwards. "It was tough. We weren't really planning on the one-stop at the beginning, but after the first lap it was kind of our only option to get back into [contention for victory].
"The final stint with Oscar catching I was pushing flat out. Rewarding for that and the perfect result today."
Behind the dominant McLarens, Russell rounded out the podium for Mercedes some 20 seconds down the road, ahead of an unhappy Leclerc in fourth. The Ferrari driver had led the opening stages from pole position, and appeared to have the pace to keep Piastri at bay, but his race unraveled in the second half as balance issues slowed him significantly.
Alonso took Aston Martin's best result of the season so far with fifth, while Sauber's Gabriel Bortoleto scored his best ever finish with an impressive drive to sixth.
Alonso's teammate Lance Stroll took seventh on a good day for Aston Martin, while Liam Lawson took his second consecutive eighth-place finish for Racing Bulls.
Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who looked off the pace all weekend, finished ninth after an investigation into an incident where he appeared to force Lewis Hamilton off the track yielded no penalty, while Kimi Antonelli rounded out the top ten for Mercedes.
Hamilton, in his debut season at Ferrari, qualified and finished 12th on his worst weekend yet with the team. The Briton expressed frustration with his performance throughout the weekend, telling reporters he was "absolutely useless" and joking that Ferrari "probably need to change driver."
Norris' win cuts Piastri's championship lead to nine points as F1 heads into its summer break, with McLaren celebrating its 200th Grand Prix victory with the team's fourth consecutive 1-2 finish.
After the four-week summer hiatus, F1 resumes on August 31 with the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.
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