Lando Norris took clinical advantage of a beneficial strategy to win the Hungarian Grand Prix, harried to the end by McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri, to push himself right back into the world championship fight.
Hoping for a tonic to take away with him into the summer break after losing out to Piastri in Belgium last weekend, he got it – a lucky win in a way after an in-race call to do a one-stopper – but he unquestionably delivered it under intense pressure at the end.
His margin over Piastri was just 0.6sec, when a single late slip would have been suicidal. He didn’t make that slip.
Credit, too, to Piastri for clawing his way into the heart of the contest, having been 12 seconds back when he came out from his second stop.
Norris’s victory, his fifth of the season, took him to within nine points of championship leader Piastri, who finished runner-up, with George Russell third for Mercedes.
At the other end of the see-saw, Lewis Hamilton was lapped and finished 12th (to which misery we return later).
But back to Norris, for whom it had looked bleak when he was tentative while well-positioned at the opening bend on Piastri’s inside. He went straight down from third on the grid into fifth place. He passed Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso soon, and then strategy did most of the rest for him.
While the cars in front peeled in for new tyres, Norris stayed out. The crucial question was put to him by race engineer Will Joseph: ‘We’re in the one-stop window. Forty laps on the hard tyre. Are you up for it?’
‘Yeah, why not!’ came the response. And on lap 31 of 70 he pitted to go onto the hard tyres. He came out 19 seconds behind then-leader Leclerc. Leclerc, Piastri and Russell in front of him had to stop again.
There was a moment Norris wavered. He went on to the gravel. Joseph told him to keep his focus. ‘We can’t afford these mistakes,’ was the final encouragement.
It was dawning on Leclerc that after taking a brilliant and utterly unexpected pole on Saturday that the race was running away from him. ‘We’re going to lose,’ he said. ‘We’re losing so much time.’
He had looked so in command in the early stages, his pace in clean air too brisk for even the McLarens. Yet, his speed fell off alarmingly, and he was passed well by Piastri, thus slipping back to third and finally to fourth when Russell passed him.
Norris kept his calm and held off Piastri, who locked up his front right on the penultimate lap in a final attempt to wrest victory. It was dramatic at the close, a slow-burner belatedly catching light.
As for Hamilton, another chastening day. Saturday was a calamity for him, one that saw the seven-time world champion qualifying 12th to Leclerc’s pole.
‘Absolutely useless,’ was Hamilton’s own description of himself. He said Ferrari should find another driver. Which is a strange one when you are paid £60million a year for your prowess.
He can be hard on himself, self-flagellating even, in the midst of disappointment. He can also rally himself with renewed vigour the next day.
The omens this morning were not good. In the driver parade which takes place two hours before the lights go out, he had stood isolated at the front of the bus, hiding under an umbrella and avoiding the public address interviews.
He then looked distracted as the Hungarian national anthem played on the grid. And when the music stopped, he dropped two places at the start, down to 14th.
He was lapping 1.5sec slower than Leclerc, then in his purple patch. Admittedly he was on hard tyres and going long in his first stint. Max Verstappen was on his tail on lap 29. ‘I’m a sitting duck,’ said Hamilton as the Dutchman closed in. How that idiom was interpreted on the Ferrari pit wall is anyone’s guess.
Anyway, Verstappen, who went on to finish ninth, audaciously lobbed himself up the inside on lap 29. The pair nearly crashed. Hamilton ran off the track. The stewards said they would investigate the incident after the race.
Worse was to follow for Hamilton before a chink of sunshine. He was lapped as he finally pitted. On new tyres, he hit his stride, unlapping himself for a period as he passed Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Willliams’ Carlos Sainz.
But he was lapped again, suffering another August day as dark as winter.
