McLaren CEO Zak Brown was quick to praise his drivers and the whole team in the wake of the Hungarian Grand Prix, calling the performance “as close to perfect as you can get” after Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri delivered yet another 1-2.
Norris won the race from third on the grid, making the most of an alternate one-stop strategy to jump his two-stopping team mate, who had been running second behind Charles Leclerc in the early stages.
Although Piastri easily overtook Leclerc after the second round of stops, he ran out of time to find a way past his team mate in the last few laps, Norris getting his worn, hard tyres to just about last the distance.
Brown wasn’t just proud of how his drivers performed at the Hungaroring as they recorded their seventh 1-2 of the season, but also the strategists, and the pit stop crews who delivered two 1.9-second pit stops, just one tenth off the team’s own record of 1.8 seconds set in Qatar in 2023.
“A great way to go into the summer break,” Brown told Sky Sports F1 afterwards. “I’ve got to say, you’re never perfect in a race, you have to go back [and analyse] but I think it was about as close to perfect as you can get.
“The drivers were awesome, the pit stops were amazing, the strategy was great to get Lando up there, Oscar drove brilliantly, I just couldn’t be prouder of this racing team.”
While splitting the McLaren drivers’ strategies proved to be a masterstroke, and although they were helped by Leclerc suffering a chassis issue, both Piastri and Norris carried enough speed to turn it into the two-horse race around the Hungaroring.
But their close battle at the end did also mean more nail-biting moments for the McLaren pit wall, watching their drivers close in on their quest for victory. Although there was no wheel-to-wheel battle this time round, as Piastri ran out of time to mount a sustained challenge, he did lock up on his one real opportunity, which made for an uncomfortable heart in mouth moment for the papaya team.
“We talk about it before the race, they know what they are doing,” Brown elaborated. “They know what the rules of engagement are. They haven’t put a wheel wrong and that is exactly what we want to see. This time Lando came out on top, you never know what will happen in the next race, and it just shows how evenly matched they are.”
While Norris wound up on the preferential strategy through circumstance, after a poor first lap saw him drop behind Fernando Alonso and George Russell, Team Principal Andrea Stella was of the firm belief that in terms of driving in Hungary, there was nothing to choose between his two charges.
“Lando and Oscar are driving at a very high level, in absolute terms, when it comes to race craft in Formula 1,” Stella said. “As we see, it’s always very close, it’s always very marginal, and if we take today, in fairness, I think both will have to be happy with their driving.
“Lando found himself on a deviating strategy, and he had more clean air, more laps in which he could use the full potential of the car. Oscar spent quite some time behind Leclerc, this might have cost him a bit of time, but I think both executed their race at the highest standards.
“I’m not surprised, they are both great drivers, they are both improving race by race, and I’m sure they will keep doing this until the end of the season.”
With Leclerc in the mix for much of the race, and George Russell winding up on the podium for Mercedes, Stella knows his team won’t have an easy task for the rest of the season to keep their nose in front. But he remains pleased with how McLaren are handling having their drivers fight for the World Championship.
“I think this is a great way of honouring Formula 1 racing, these are the values of McLaren, it’s going to be, hopefully, a matter between the two McLaren drivers, even if we saw Ferrari today was in the competition for the victory for two thirds of the races,” he said.
“I think we have a very entertaining and interesting final part of the season.”
Piastri leads Norris by nine points in the Championship after 14 races of the 2025 season.
