Norris fought for a close win at the F1 2025 Hungarian GP with Piastri hounding him til the end with tight battles for the top championship spot. But what does this mean for the rest of the season?
After Leclerc produced a much need pole position for Ferrari, the pressure was on for him to maintain his lead ahead of the ever dominant McLaren for the F1 2025 Hungarian GP. The current championship leader Piastri lined up his car behind Leclerc, keen to continue his win streak from last weekend. Before lights out, whispers of potential risk of rain were floating around, expected to arrive at the main straight within the first few laps. Hamilton started well on the backfoot being unable to break past Q2 in qualifying and needed to pull out some mighty laps to catch up. However, Alonso found great success in qualifying and managed to place his car in P5 for Aston Martin.
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Lights Out In Hungary:
As the lights went out Lando took an aggressive lunge towards his teammate to no avail. This risky move lost him a place during the first lap. Leclerc managed to uphold his lead ahead of Oscar Piastri in P2. Alonso took a full throttle approach to remain in the top 5, attempting to attack Russell for P3. Hamilton’s weekend was unfortunately going from bad to worse as he dropped back two places down to P14. Verstappen displayed some master class driving to try and climb back up from a disastrous P8 start.
By lap four, Leclerc was able to extend his lead by 1.791 seconds to Piastri behind, the Ferrari appeared to be performing comfortably with the cool track temperature. Isack Hadjar reported over the radio a potential injury to his hand after taking up some gravel at the race start. Meanwhile, other rookie Bortoleto went under investigation for a potential false start but was looked into no further.
By lap 10, drivers from Alonso in P5 all the way down to Colapinto in. P18 found themselves in a DRS train, keeping the field close together. Up in P4, Norris seemed to be really struggling to pass Russell who was dividing the two McLaren drivers. While Bortoleto was cleared of any false start suspicion, his teammate Hulkenberg was unfortunately handed a five second time penalty for a false start.
Norris began to fall back, presumably for the sake of cooling his tyres which took his gap to Russell out of DRS range. He continued to report struggles with tyre deg over the radio. While Norris was struggling, McLaren decided to pit Piastri in P2, attempting an undercut on Leclerc. The undercut was initially unsuccessful however Piastri had the upper hand with tyre temps. As the various pit stops shook up the order, Alonso managed to place in P3 by lap 22.
Verstappen And Hamilton Clash:
Hamilton continued to lose time to Hadjar ahead of him in P10, only managing to climb one position since the race start. He found himself battling with Verstappen for P11. During this battle, Verstappen had seemingly forced Hamilton off track to overtake; this was noted by the stewards. By lap 30, Norris remained on his original medium tyres and was yet to pit, McLaren were holding out for the perfect time to pit in order to beat Leclerc and regain the lead. They decided to finally box him for fresh hard tyres the following lap. Hamilton finally managed to gain a points position following Isack Hadjar who entered the pits.
After some clever strategy regarding pit stop allocations from McLaren, Piastri was able to take the lead from Leclerc on lap 41. Norris was eventually able to catch up and McLaren had themselves in a position for a 1-2 finish by lap 45. The order was then changed again when McLaren decided to pit Piastri for a two stop strategy. This undercut was successful, as he retook P2 on lap 51.
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Lando And Oscar Battle It Out:
Norris continued to lose time to Piastri despite being ahead of him. Piastri was gunning for the win, outdriving him by 1.4 seconds. According to strategy and time calculations, Piastri would be right on Norris’ tail by then end of the race. George Russell took a risky move to take P3 from Leclerc. He protested over the radio due to Leclerc moving under braking, but this was never investigated. Piastri was quickly closing in on Norris, fighting for the top position in the last few laps. Piastri and Norris fought an extremely tight battle in the final 3 laps. Due to an unfortunate lockup from Piastri, he was unable to take the win as Norris took it home for McLaren. Leclerc was handed a five second penalty for driving erratically however this did not affect his P4 finish. Extremely tight battles from McLaren for the F1 2025 Hungarian GP.
Feature Image Credit: McLaren Media