Lando Norris took the lead of the Hungarian GP towards the end after a strategy call by McLaren dropped Oscar Piastri to P2. The team asked Norris to give the position back and he did, but not without a fight. Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur said after the race that Norris did not treat Piastri correctly, and called out the McLaren strategists at the same time.

Vasseur felt that McLaren dug its own grave by pitting Norris first, which handed him P1. As such, asking the Bristol-born driver to give it back to his teammate must have stung him. However, Vasseur saw it as a fair decision.

The Frenchman said,

“I understand that in the race there was Norris’ undercut on Piastri, a choice made by the team to protect Lando from the comeback of his rivals, but he was still harsh on Oscar. Then they made a decision that I can understand. Piastri was leading from the start and the team’s decision was to invert the positions.”

Norris could not make sense of the team’s orders to swap positions. He argued that he was in the lead and that it was their decision to undercut Piastri in the first place.

After setting several lap times which were quicker than Piastri’s, Norris reluctantly gave the latter the lead on lap 68. Repeated pleas by his race engineer on the radio changed his mind because, at one point, it looked as though Norris would take it all the way to grab his second F1 win.

Norris was a changed man post-race
McLaren’s primary objective was to secure as many points for the team as possible and with a 1-2 finish, it was all but confirmed.

Norris, however, was eyeing the Drivers’ Title. The gap between him and Max Verstappen on P1 is 76 points, but had he held on to P1, it would have been 69.

But Norris realized that he could close the gap later and remembered all the times Piastri helped him in the past.

In the post-race interview, he said,

“It’s tough, but I know what Oscar’s done for me in the past. It’s always tough when you’re fighting for a win and a win means so much to me and also to him. And yeah, I just had to try to put myself in his shoes and understand it that way.”

So, even if it did need some convincing, Norris eventually came around. But as Vasseur suggested, this should never have arisen. Piastri’s maiden win would not have been marred by controversy, had McLaren gone ahead with the conventional call of having Piastri in first.