Oscar Piastri wins inaugural Grand Prix in awkward 1-2 for McLaren at Hungary

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

It needed lots of radio messages and Lando Norris complying with the team's requests, but eventually Oscar Piastri won his first race in Formula One at the Hungarian Grand Prix, ahead of his McLaren team mate Norris. Lewis Hamilton finished third after holding off a furious Max Verstappen.

When the lights went out at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Norris immediately veered right to cover his team mate while Verstappen then opted to take the outside into turn one. The three of then literally went into the corner side by side, leading to Verstappen going wide early on, far off the track and hard on the throttle soon to not lose too much.

As Piastri easily took the lead, Verstappen off-road excursion was soon under investigation as Norris argued clearly that the Red Bull drivers was only ahead under breaking because he did not commit to the corner anyway. After more discussions between Norris, Verstappen and their respective engineers, Verstappen fumingly accepted his engineer's advice to let Norris past for second place.

Also at the start, Hamilton got in the mix and momentarily sat in second position until Verstappen pushed him wide in Turn 2, enabling Verstappen to take second and Norris to follow through.

Sainz meanwhile had a poor start and initially lost three postiions, regaining one on Alonso in the second lap.

The drivers who started on soft tyres started pitting on lap 7, followed by Alonso and Ricciardo on lap 8. Stroll was the only remaining car on softs at the time and went on for 6 more laps before changing to mediums, just like his team mate. The longer first stint didn't pay off immediately though as he ended up 3 places down on Alonso, allowing Albon and Magnussen to get the better of him during the first stops. Alonso though otherwise being unhappy he was now on 7 lap older scrubbed medium tyres.

On lap 17 it was time for Hamilton to stop, switching from medium to hard tyres. McLaren covered that stop the next lap by stopping Norris in a sub-optimal 2.8s stop. Piastri pitted another lap later, giving the lead away to Verstappen.

After three fastest laps by Hamilton, Verstappen and Sainz eventually got pitted, bringing Leclerc into the lead. Verstappen rejoined the track in 5th place, 7 seconds behind Hamilton. Tsunoda followed 3 second behind while still running on his initial mediums, just like Leclerc.

As Verstappen recorded the fastest lap, nearly a full second faster than what Hamilton did that same lap, Leclerc was pitted and returned in 5th place.

Surely enough Verstappen cought Hamilton and was in for a fight. After a few failed attempts to get past, Hamilton locked under braking for Turn 1 and allowed Verstappen to get ahead, only for the latter to miss Turn 2 and allow Hamilton to easily sweep past, into third place again. The Dutchman repeated over the radio he had trouble getting his car to turn properly despite "-5 brake bias".

As they battle continued for more laps with Verstappen repeatedly very very close, Hamilton noted "it's a very long way to go on this damn tyre". At the end of that lap, Hamilton was called in with Leclerc, who had meanwhile joined the battling duo, joining him to take on mediums while Hamilton was put on another new set of hard tyres, a compound he wasn't particularly happy with so far.

At McLaren meanwhile they have a bit of a situation to try to not to favour either driver, or otherwise try to make it not too obvious if they do. With 1.8s between the two of them, Norris was the first to pit in lap 46 as Piastri was told this was to cover off Hamilton, though there was still quite a bit of margin for that. As Norris recorded the fastest lap, Piastri pitted two laps later and ended up behind his team mate. However, Norris was soon asked to "reinstate the order at your convenience". Strange behaviour by McLaren who could've instead opted to just pit Piastri first, and no orders would've been necessary.

With 20 laps to go, Norris leads Piastri by 3.8 seconds. Hamilton followed at 5s in third, then Leclerc closely behind and then Verstappen at 4s on fresh tyres as he was the last one of the front runners to pit. After a few quick laps by Norris, McLaren changed that message to "once you get close to Lando, we'll swap positions". Sadly for Piastri, that gap had increased to 3.8 seconds and Verstappen behind was trying to make it past Leclerc while being furious at his team: "No don't give me that sh**, you gave me the strategy, I'm trying to save what's left" following his engineer's request to take it easy with the tyres early on.

In front a bit of a similar story as Norris was told to save the tyres, a conflicting message as the Briton was trying to build up an advantage to his teammate to not have to give up the win.

By lap 62, with 8 left, Norris was told "Lando, please remember every Sunday morning meeting we have", with the driver replying "yeah well, tell him to close up to me, please". Clearly tension building between the team and Norris who obviously smelled his opportunity to take back some points in the championship.

Verstappen meanwhile had got past Leclerc and was again chasing Hamilton. On lap 62 Verstappen was pushed wide at Turn 2 and asked "Shouldn't you leave a car's width", quickly replied by his engineer by "We think you were behind on the apex, Max", with Max then saying "Ok whatever man".

A single lap later Verstappen did a very very optimistic attempt to dive on the inside of Hamilton at Turn 1, resulting in Verstappen bumping on Hamilton's front wheel. Verstappen's rear flew up in the air but interestingly there wasn't really any obvious damage and both cars continued on just fine, albeit with Verstappen down, only just ahead of Sainz, 2 seconds behind Leclerc. Verstappen complained about Hamilton "moving under breaking", but his engineer replied "you're being childish, very childish".

Three laps before the end of the race, Norris was once again asked to let Piastri past with "Winning this championship is not done alone. You will need Oscar and the team, so please do it now". Eventually, Norris complied by backing off and giving away 7 seconds on the main straight, making sure it was obvious.

The McLaren duo eventually crossed the finish line closely together as Mercedes' Hamilton takes third place after yet another fierce battle with Max Verstappen. George Russell took the extra point for setting the fastest lap of the race.