Oscar-winning performance as Piastri breaks through
Matt Clayton
Monday, 22 July 2024
First into the first corner, first over the line … Oscar Piastri’s maiden F1 win will look simple in the sport’s history books; while the context behind his maiden triumph was anything but, it shouldn’t cloud his biggest breakthrough.
Oscar Piastri has become Australia’s fifth Formula 1® Grand Prix winner – and the seventh winner in 13 Grands Prix this year – with a victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix that was straightforward on track, but anything but off it.
Piastri, who qualified second and just 0.022secs behind McLaren teammate Lando Norris on a weekend where the papaya cars has the measure of the rest of the field, set up his maiden Sunday success – he won last year’s Qatar sprint, technically not a race ‘win’ – with a superb start that saw him jump Norris into the first corner, and build a three-second lead within five laps.
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With overtaking at a premium at a steaming-hot Hungaroring, Piastri looked in complete control – but eyebrows were raised when Norris pitted first on lap 17, Piastri negating an undercut when he boxed one lap later.
In the pair’s second stops, Norris was pitted first again – on lap 45, two laps before Piastri – as McLaren attempted to cover themselves against Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, who had used strategy to get past Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen and jump to third place. Piastri pitted two laps later and emerged behind Norris, but was told his teammate would cede position. But Norris looked to have other ideas.
Norris built a lead as big as six seconds, and as the laps ticked down, the McLaren pit wall became increasingly agitated with the Briton’s reluctance to slow his pace, the team’s 1-2 not under threat from Hamilton behind. Norris continued to argue that he should stay ahead, but eventually relented by slowing dramatically on the start-finish straight with three laps to reluctantly hand Piastri his lead back, paving the way for the 23-year-old’s maiden F1 win.
Piastri crossed the line 2.141secs ahead of Norris, who also finished second in McLaren’s most recent 1-2 result, the Italian Grand Prix of 2021 won by Daniel Ricciardo.
Hamilton was 14.880secs adrift in third after a late-race clash with Verstappen at Turn 1, Verstappen’s car briefly sent skywards as the pair touched wheels in an incident that saw Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc demote the reigning world champion to fifth after a race where he was repeatedly critical of his strategy and car’s performance over the team radio.
After 2023 saw Verstappen win 19 of 22 Grands Prix, Piastri’s victory saw him swell the number of winners this year to seven – the most since 2012 – with 11 rounds left.
His win continued the trend of pole-sitters not converting this season – Sunday’s race was the fifth in succession where the pole-sitter didn’t win – and was the fourth year in a row that pole hasn’t led to victory in Hungary.
Aussie watch
While Piastri celebrated, compatriot Daniel Ricciardo was left frustrated after a weekend that showed plenty of promise was undone by a so-so start and a wrong strategy call as he finished 12th for RB.
Ricciardo topped Q1 on Saturday and qualified ninth after a session where Sergio Perez (Red Bull Racing) and RB teammate Yuki Tsunoda both crashed and caused red flags, but was on his back foot almost immediately on Sunday when soft-tyre shod Alex Albon (Williams) and Kevin Magnussen (Haas) dropped him to 11th on lap one.
A decision to pit Ricciardo early on lap seven, which committed him to a two-stopper, backfired from there as the 35-year-old spent the race stuck in a DRS train stalemate, with teammate Tsunoda – who stopped once and set a fastest lap time that was nine-tenths of a second slower – finishing ninth and earning two world championship points.
In FIA Formula 3® action in Budapest, Australia’s Christian Mansell moved up two places to fifth in the world championship standings with two rounds remaining, the ART Grand Prix driver finishing fifth in the sprint race and fourth in the feature at the Hungaroring.
In Saturday’s 18-lap sprint, Mansell started and finished fifth, banking six world championship points after finishing 3.4secs behind maiden race-winner Nikita Bedrin (PHM AIX Racing).
The 19-year-old added another 13 points to his tally on Sunday, using an aggressive start from eighth on the grid and a lap four pass of Mexican Santiago Ramos (Trident) to finish fifth on the road before being promoted to fourth when ART teammate Laurens van Hoepen, who finished second, was disqualified for his car being underweight.
Mansell moved to 97 points for the season, trailing Italy’s series leader Gabriele Mini by 22 points with four races left and a maximum of 78 points up for grabs.
The top three in the championship – Mini (Prema), along with Luke Browning (Hitech) and Arvid Lindblad (Prema) – didn’t score in Sunday’s feature, which was led by Mansell’s ART teammate Nikola Tsolov from start to finish, Mansell 1.7secs adrift at its conclusion after a late-race safety car bunched up the pack.
Australia’s Tommy Smith (Van Amersfoort Racing) couldn’t kick on from his breakthrough fourth-place result at Silverstone last time out, the 22-year qualifying 29th and finishing 25th and 24th in the sprint and feature respectively, demoted two spots after the chequered flag on Sunday for a five-second track limits penalty.
Smith is 20th in the championship with rounds to come in Belgium next weekend, and in Italy from August 30 to September 1.
Unsung hero
Other than Will Joseph, Norris’ race engineer who eventually convinced his driver to hand Piastri the lead back? There were a lot of cranky drivers in the heat of Hungary who lamented the way their races shook out, so George Russell get a hat-tip here after a fighting drive from 17th on the grid into the points in eighth.
A lower-end top-10 result for the Briton doesn’t sound like much after his recent win (Austria) and pole (Great Britain), but recovering from mis-timing his Q1 run to bow out early on Saturday to score on Sunday was something, and he took an extra point for the fastest lap to boot.
Number to know
6: Piastri became the sixth driver to take their maiden F1 Grand Prix win at the Hungaroring; the others are Damon Hill (1993), Fernando Alonso (2003), Jenson Button (2006), Heikki Kovalainen (2008) and Esteban Ocon (2021)
This is the day I dreamed of as a kid, standing on the top step of an F1 podium. Obviously a bit complicated at the end, but I put myself in the right position at the start.
Hungarian Grand Prix: top 10
- Oscar Piastri (McLaren) 1hr 38mins 01.989secs
- Lando Norris (McLaren) +2.141secs
- Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) +14.880secs
- Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +19.686secs
- Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) +21.349secs
- Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) +23.073secs
- Sergio Perez (Red Bull Racing) +39.792secs
- George Russell (Mercedes) +42.368secs
- Yuki Tsunoda (RB) +77.259secs
- Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +77.976secs
Standings (top 5)
Drivers' championship
- Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) 265 points
- Lando Norris (McLaren) 189
- Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) 162
- Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) 154
- Oscar Piastri (McLaren) 149
Constructors' championship
- Red Bull Racing (389 points)
- McLaren (338)
- Ferrari (322)
- Mercedes (241)
- Aston Martin (69)
Next race
Round 14: Belgium, Spa-Francorchamps (July 26-28)
