Oscar Piastri has raced to his maiden Formula One victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix, becoming only the fifth Australian driver to reach motor racing’s pinnacle — but only after a day of extraordinary internal team strife at McLaren.
The 23-year-old Melbourne ace’s triumph was only finalised on Sunday when a furious Lando Norris finally agreed to follow team orders and do the honourable thing by giving up a certain victory to his young Australian teammate.
Eventually, despite having resisted team engineers’ pleas for nearly all of the last 20 laps of the race, Norris complied reluctantly after a series of increasingly fervent messages suggesting he would be seriously risking team harmony if he took the chequered flag first.
Piastri had been in control of Sunday’s race after he grabbed the lead on the first turn from polesitter Norris.
But after leading for much of the race, Norris, the nearest challenger to Max Verstappen in the F1 championship race, was handed an apparent lifeline by McLaren when the team pulled him in for his second tyre change two laps earlier than Piastri.
The ‘undercut’ gave Norris the lead, and he held a five-second advantage over Piastri, with the team telling the Englishman that he should give the place back to the Aussie “at your convenience”.
Apparently, Norris didn’t think it was convenient at all. His race engineer Will Joseph kept imploring him to give back the place, only for Norris to say: “Well, tell him to catch up, please.”
“I’m sure you’ll do the right thing,” Joseph said later, before adding: “Just remember every single Sunday morning meeting we’ve had…”
Then, he told Norris, “I’m trying to protect you…”, before later asserting “there are five laps to go. The way to win a championship is not by yourself, it’s with the team. You’re gonna need Oscar and you’re gonna need the team.”
With three laps left, he said: “Please. Do. It. Now!”
With a huge row looming, Norris did slow up, allowing Piastri past on the 68th of 70 laps at the Hungaroring circuit, enabling the Victorian to win his first Grand Prix after four previous podiums. He had also won a sprint race in Qatar last year.
Norris ended second, with Lewis Hamilton third, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc fourth and an out-of-sorts Verstappen eventually fifth.
Piastri now joins Jack Brabham, Alan Jones, Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo on the Australian F1 roll of honour, and declared: “It’s very, very special. This is the day I dreamed of as a kid, stepping to the top of an F1 podium.
“Obviously, a bit complicated at the end but I put myself in the right position at the start, and thank you to the team – an amazing effort.”
Asked if he felt Norris would eventually give the place back, Piastri added: “The longer you leave it the more you get a bit nervous – but it was well executed by the team.
“I put myself in the right position. Yes my pace wasn’t as quick as I’d like in the last 10 laps, but I was still in the right position to make it happen. To have won after 18 months with the team feels amazing.”
It was resurgent McLaren’s first one-two in a race since Italy in 2021.
After he had cooled down but remained evidently miffed, Norris shrugged: “Team asked me to do it, so I did it…”
But he praised Piastri, adding: “We did it in style. Oscar got a good start, got me off the line, controlled the race well, so it was coming at some point (for him) and he deserved it today.”
For Piastri, for so long considered one of the great talents in motor sport, it was his first Grand Prix win in just his 35th start. He had also won a sprint race in Qatar last year.
