Sometimes, a Formula 1 win is much less about pace than technique and gritty driving. Lando Norris held off McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in a tense end to win the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday (August 3, 2025) and enhance his title possibilities.
Overtaking in Hungary is hard, however Norris had to work laborious to preserve the win as Piastri loomed behind him within the ultimate laps.
Norris celebrated with a double fist pump on prime of his automobile after claiming McLaren’s 2 hundredth F1 win by lower than a second to reduce Piastri’s standings lead to 9 factors from 16.
“I’m dead. It was tough, it was tough,” Norris stated. “The final stint, with Oscar catching, I was pushing flat out.”
It was the fourth one-two end in a row for McLaren, with Norris successful three of these head-to-heads because the momentum swung again towards him forward of the four-week midseason break.
Making the fitting callA yr on from a contentious first win for Piastri over Norris in Hungary after awkward radio messages, this was a race selected the observe.
Norris briefly dropped to fifth on the primary lap however made his tires final to cease solely as soon as, whereas Piastri modified tires twice.
Piastri steadily reduce into Norris’ lead within the latter levels of the race however the British driver held on with previous tires to take the win. Piastri practically collided along with his teammate when he locked up a wheel whereas making an attempt to go on the second-to-last lap. Still, it was Norris who held on to have the final phrase of their title combat.
“Good racing. Good strategy. Good call,” was how Norris summed it up on the radio.
Piastri’s two-stop method occurred as a result of, on the time, he and McLaren have been extra targeted on getting forward of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, whose tempo finally fell away anyway.
“It wasn’t obvious that we just had enough pace to blow past (Leclerc),” Piastri stated. “For Lando, there was just about nothing to lose by making an attempt a one-stop race. For myself, probably there was.”
George Russell took third for Mercedes after fighting his way past Leclerc in a contest that earned Leclerc a time penalty for nearly colliding with Russell while defending.
Defending champion Max Verstappen was only ninth after being off the pace all week. He stays third in the standings, but drops to 97 points off leader Piastri in another heavy blow to an already unlikely title defense.
Ferrari frustrationLeclerc started on pole position with hopes of landing Ferrari its first Grand Prix win of the year, but ended up fourth after a radio message of what he later admitted was misplaced blame aimed at the team.
“This is so incredibly frustrating. We’ve lost all competitiveness,” he told the team over the radio. However, he later told broadcaster Sky Sports that the car actually had a chassis problem he only learned about later.
A day after calling himself “useless” and questioning whether Ferrari might need to replace him, Lewis Hamilton ended up 12th, exactly where he started. His comments after the race seemed set to fuel more speculation about his troubled first season with the Italian team.
“There’s a lot going on in the background that is not great,” Hamilton told Sky Sports, without explaining further.
Hamilton never seemed to have the pace to fight for points and was at one stage forced off the track by Verstappen as his old rival overtook him.
Aston’s dayFernando Alonso took Aston Martin’s best result of the season with fifth on a slow track that suited his car, with Gabriel Bortoleto a surprise sixth for Sauber and Lance Stroll seventh in the other Aston Martin.
Liam Lawson was eighth for Racing Bulls, with Verstappen ninth and Kimi Antonelli 10th for Mercedes.
