“Oh mate. It’s better you don’t f***ing talk to me now.”
There’s just something about Hungary and McLaren.
It seems McLaren is cursed to turn up in Budapest but do so under the duress of having its two drivers battling for position and threatening to blow it.
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It was the case in 2024 and 2025, and despite the run of form leading up to this weekend, it was the case again at the weekend.
Lando Norris stormed to pole, but Oscar Piastri got the better start to take the lead on the first lap.
The slower car led, but track position is more important than pace at the narrow Hungaroring, and Piastri had the chance to dictate the speed and control the race.
It was deeply frustrating for Norris, who repeatedly told his team that he was quicker and needed to be let through on the track or through the pit lane.
McLaren held its nerve and refused to have the defending champion waved into the lead in the first real test of the post-papaya rules order.
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But it needn’t have worried, because Piastri’s race was about to detonate for an entirely different set of reasons.
Piastri pitted on lap 33 and was dumped into the omnipresent traffic around the short circuit, and five laps later he closed onto the back of Carlos Sainz, who was racing Fernando Alonso for position.
“Get out of the way, you idiot!” Piastri radioed, his blood pressure rising as the Williams driver appeared not to heed the blue flags.
Sainz ran wide exiting turn 2. Piastri took the racing line. Sainz attempted to resume the racing line.
They made contact, with Piastri shoved off the track.
It cost him a small but decisive amount of time.
Norris pitted at the end of that lap and emerged fractionally ahead in the net lead of the race.
His engineer, Tom Stallard, pre-empted Piastri’s rage.
“Oscar, that’s Sainz that cost us that,” he said.
But Piastri wasn’t having any of it.
“Oh mate. It’s better you don’t f***ing talk to me now. Nice of you guys to factor that one in [by pitting Norris], by the way. Thanks.”
Piastri simmered away for another 20 laps until his gearbox gave up, leaving him forlornly parked by the side of the road as his teammate charged to a comfortable victory.
WHAT HAPPENED WITH SAINZ?
It’s no exaggeration to say contact with Sainz cost Piastri the lead and, with it, a shot at victory, notwithstanding Norris was the quicker of the two.
It was a bizarre incident with several possible explanations, though none of them was especially compelling.
There were issues with the blue flags system during the race that seemed to generate unusually bad lapped traffic. Some drivers reported not receiving warnings on their steering wheels to identify them specifically as needing to yield, while others claimed the blue light panels seemed to be flashing at random.
It forced drivers to rely more heavily on their pit walls than the flags and light panels.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff memorably scalded some of his rival teams for doing a poor job in this regard.
“The marshalling system was not functioning, and cars in the back defending [drivers on the lead lap] … it is just disgraceful from some of the Teletubbies engineers that sit on the pit walls of these teams not telling their drivers what’s happening behind.”
That didn’t apply to Sainz, however, with the stewards noting that he was warned by his particular Teletubby as Piastri approached. Onboard footage also shows he passed several blue light panels.
The Spaniard — generally regarded as one of the cleverer and more tactical drivers on the grid — argued ignorance.
“At this stage I had no idea I was about to get lapped,” he said, per Autosport. “On top of that, I was in a big fight with Fernando.
“[Piastri] was in my [blind] spot on the angle, so it was impossible from my side to avoid him.
“Probably a bit better communication would have helped, but at the same time, [it is] a racing thing that sometimes happens.”
He said he was “really sorry” for the effect he had on Piastri’s race but believed he had a “pretty good excuse”.
Piastri wasn’t impressed, describing it as “unacceptable” and “one of the dumbest things” he’d ever seen on a racetrack.
“He was fighting Fernando for last place like it was the world championship,” he said, per Autosport. “It cost me the lead of the race.
“He’s quite critical of others. Others have given him some stick before for being frustrating on track. When you go and do something like that, I think maybe you should look in the mirror a bit.”
The stewards penalised Sainz for being wholly to blame, though the infringement was worth only five seconds.
Cold comfort for the seething Piastri.
WHAT ABOUT THE STRATEGY?
Piastri’s blow-up was about as brutal as the Australian has ever been on radio, speaking to the depths of his frustration.
Of particular curiosity was what sounded like a veiled accusation that the team had chosen to pit Norris after his tangle with Sainz to guarantee him the lead — “Nice of you guys to factor that one in,” he said.
Some will have chosen to read into them a deep-seated rage with the team over the handling of its strategy — and who could blame him given the various incidents in Hungary over the last two seasons.
It would be over-egging things, however.
“In the moment I was hoping maybe they would not pit Lando because of that incident to at least give me the chance to stay in the lead,” he admitted to Sky Sports after digesting the race. “But I think that’s not very reasonable.
“I was more just very upset in the moment about what had happened.”
Piastri also said the timing of his stop was “fine” despite dropping him into traffic, acknowledging that the team had to cover Lewis Hamilton, who at the time still looked like a victory contender.
The biggest problem is that Piastri wasn’t as quick as Norris.
Track position is critical in Budapest, but a slower driver is still vulnerable around the pit windows, and even without the Sainz contact, Piastri keeping ahead of Norris after his second stop was going to be a close call.
Piastri made almost no gains on Norris during the six laps he had fresher tyres. The Briton, having closed the gap to practically nothing just before the Australian’s stop, seemed to have his teammate cornered.
“Lando was very quick once he had the lead, and he took advantage of his pace and the fact that there was some delay for Oscar,” McLaren boss Andrea Stella told Sky Sports. “That’s racing. We are McLaren Racing, and today it was great racing.”
Or at least it could have been had Piastri been able to retain the lead and force a battle — assuming his car would have made it to the finish.
BUT IT WAS STILL A BIG RESULT FOR McLAREN
Piastri’s retirement with a gearbox problem — the team’s second such retirement of the season — was the only wrinkle in an otherwise impressively competitive weekend for the defending title-winning team.
McLaren’s big upgrade delivered not just pole position but one of the season’s most comfortable victories too.
An analysis of race pace in Budapest puts McLaren around 0.3 seconds per lap faster than Ferrari, the next-quickest team, and around 0.4 seconds per lap faster than Mercedes and Red Bull Racing — and an impressive step after having been badly wayward since May.
“It’s great to see the hard work has been rewarded,” Stella said. “Thank you very much to all the men and women at McLaren for having been so committed in the design and the delivery of the upgrades.
“Lando was in a condition to squeeze every single millisecond of the car, which was good enough yesterday for the pole position [by] 0.012s, but today, if anything, the pace was even more encouraging.”
In fact it was more than encouraging. It was unexpected even by the team.
“When we look at the numbers and the anticipated numbers associated with the upgrades, we thought that we needed to bring more performance to be in this condition. In this sense, if you want, yes, it is a bit of a surprise — it’s always good to have positive surprises.”
McLaren arrived in Hungary with its season on the line, with its upgrade decisive in whether it could close its massive points deficit to Mercedes or at least contend for regular victories.
It passed the test impressively, with a one-two finish likely before Piastri’s retirement.
There are some reasons for caution, though, aside from unreliability.
The reason Hungary has triggered so much internal angst in recent years is that it’s a McLaren track, with its cars chiming well with the layout and its engineers clearly understanding what it takes to get the most from the circuit.
Even Norris thinks this is perhaps his best track.
Repeatability has been the missing ingredient for all of Mercedes’s would-be title challengers, with none of them having two really good weekends in a row.
The signs are certainly good, but it will take more than just one good weekend to become a contender.
ANTONELLI F1’S HAPPIEST DRIVER DESPITE LOW-KEY WEEKEND
Despite McLaren’s clear advantage and Ferrari’s strong pace, there are really only two important numbers to consider when weighing up the significance of this race.
Mercedes’s championship lead was reduced by only one point, to 72 points over Ferrari.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s title lead grew by five points to 50 points over Lewis Hamilton.
That Mercedes could suffer its worst weekend of the year and walk away with its grip on the sport practically undiminished says a lot about the scale of the challenge its rivals must still face.
It also tells us a lot about Antonelli.
We’ve spent all year expecting the teenager’s flaws to reveal themselves to us. So far he’s shown us only how much depth there is to his character.
He started a penalised seventh in Hungary but perfectly judged an offset strategy to maximise his pace in clear air. He finished a plucky third, but it could have been second had he got lucky with the timing of Piastri’s virtual safety car.
He fended off Hamilton, who had fresher tyres, in the final stint, and yet again comfortably accounted for teammate George Russell, whom he now leads by 59 points.
Despite finishing third and never really looking likely to contend for victory, Antonelli could rightly feel like the happiest driver heading into the break.
“I think it was a very good result,” he said. “It was damage limitation after yesterday. We had to really fight for it, because this weekend we struggled a little bit overall
“We just need to really keep raising that bar and just come back stronger, because it’s going to be a very big push.”
Russell, though, leaves Hungary more battered and bruised than ever.
The team took the blame for an unusual engine problem that left him bogged down at the start, dropping from sixth to 20th — “It’s just not acceptable and not good enough from us,” Wolff said — and though he recovered strongly, he was off Antonelli’s pace and shipped another nine points to his teammate.
“Add it to the list,” Russell quipped to Sky Sports. “Pray that things calm down in the second half [of the year].”
The Mercedes dynamic has been fascinating so far this season, but expect it to become only more engrossing as the title-deciding races roll through.
FERRARI BLOWS ITS BIG CHANCE
Ferrari was favourite to win this weekend.
Ferrari warned us that it’s been favourite at some other weekends this year and not come close to winning.
Ferrari was right.
The Italian team was presented with a Mercedes open goal this weekend and fired it well over the crossbar, from inexplicably failing to execute for pole position to squandering a strong position in the race.
Hamilton should have finished on the podium at least, perhaps as high as second, yet managed to slump to fifth, one place behind Charles Leclerc, making this just the third time this year Ferrari could get at least one driver on the podium.
In fact this was the team’s fourth-lowest scoring weekend of the season.
Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong in the race.
The decision to start on softs made sense given the importance of establishing track position, but Hamilton made up only one place while Leclerc, starting on the dirty side of the grid, dropped three.
Hamilton got stuck behind Max Verstappen for the first stint, and though he undercut the Dutchman, a superb double overtake from the four-time champion reversed their positions.
He eventually got past Verstappen at the second stop window and was running second late in the race, but then Ferrari decided to pit him behind the virtual safety car, dropping him to fourth behind Antonelli.
Being caught for speeding in the pit lane then cost him a place to Leclerc, who wasn’t really in the mix all afternoon.
Ferrari should have scored heavily this weekend. Instead poor execution from the team and its drivers has left it making no real impact on Mercedes and risking any title momentum it might have generated at the halfway mark of the season.
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