Hungarian Grand Prix: Lando Norris and McLaren almost perfect as Ferrari flounder
Lando Norris ended the first half of the Formula 1 season with a victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix, which he described as “one of my best performances”.
It was a long-awaited drive for the reigning world champion and his McLaren team after a difficult start to the season.
But when McLaren finally gave him a car with the level of performance he had become accustomed to over the past season and a half, he benefited greatly.
While pre-race favorites Ferrari faltered and made, in the words of team boss Frederic Vasseur, “too many mistakes”, Norris and McLaren were almost perfect.
Even considering Kimi Antonelli’s superb start to the season for Mercedes, this was one of the most impressive and convincing victories of the season.
Norris’ only mistake was in the first round. He took pole position into the first corner, but misjudged the grip in Turn Two, slid wide and gifted the position to teammate Oscar Piastri.
It looked like a potentially fatal mistake for his hopes of victory on a track where overtaking between evenly matched cars with similar strategies was nearly impossible, but Norris remained calm.
Seeing he could easily keep pace with Piastri despite being in the dirty air, he said he always believed the win was on.
“It wasn’t my best Turn Two,” Norris said, “but after that, seeing how my pace was and how I was better in every aspect in terms of drop and speed, I was convinced that I could still win the race.”
Trapped, Norris begged for a different strategy to give himself a chance at victory, and circumstances finally offered it to him.
About half a distance. McLaren pitted Piastri to protect Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari, which had stopped for new tyres. This gave Norris fresh air and set a terrific pace.
Piastri might still have held the lead, but only if Carlos Sainz had not collided with him while lapping his Williams. The Australian driver was enraged when Norris pulled out in front of his stop a few laps later; But to the Spaniard, not to McLaren.
“The fact that I was able to keep up with Oscar on this type of track where it’s impossible to follow and impossible to pass, to be there by 0.8 seconds, I don’t know almost 40 laps or so, to be able to do that gave me the confidence that no matter what happened, whether he boxed early or late or whatever, I was going to win the race,” Norris said. he said.
“The speed advantage I had today was huge. But I don’t know why. The cars are the same and I’ve been feeling very strong lately.”
“I’ve worked on a lot of areas since last year. I’ve been a lot more confident lately about how to increase performance and I’ve worked a lot with my engineers to understand this car because it’s definitely not an easy car to understand and figure out how to drive it consistently to the limit.”
“So why? Just hard work. Hard work by my engineers and myself to improve me as a driver and improve my driving skills. That’s the answer.”
