How McLaren tangled itself in F1 team orders — and why Norris let Piastri win (2024)

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MOGYORÓD, Hungary — As the laps ticked down and Lando Norris neared victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix, his race engineer, Will Joseph, became increasingly desperate on the radio.

McLaren was about to score a 1-2 finish after dominating proceedings at the Hungaroring, which boosted its hopes in both championships.

But Norris was not the driver who was supposed to win the race.

“The way to win a championship is not by yourself,” Joseph told Norris. “It’s with the team. You’re going to need Oscar, and you’re going to need the team.”

This was meant to be Oscar Piastri’s day. His maiden grand prix victory, the lifelong dream he and his family had sacrificed so much to support, was within his grasp.

Yet it was at risk of slipping away when McLaren, in its efforts to cover off the perceived threat from the chasing Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, pitted Norris two laps earlier than Piastri. It was enough of an undercut for Norris to wipe away the gap and emerge from the pits ahead of his teammate.

Norris was quickly told to “re-establish the order at your convenience” — let Piastri through — but as he continued to push and showed little sign of doing so, Joseph’s pleas grew sterner.

“Please do it now,” Joseph said pointedly with four laps to go, Norris still running ahead.

Team versus self. That was the dilemma Norris wrestled with through the last stint: do the ‘right thing’ and hand the place — and the win — back to Piastri, or be selfish in aid of his championship hopes.

With three laps to go, Norris did what was asked of him, slowing at the exit of the final corner so Piastri could sail past on the main straight and reclaim the lead. A potential PR disaster for the team, having one of the most popular and publicly-known F1 drivers defy its instructions, had been avoided.

Norris’ decision

Norris claimed after the race that he was “quite confident always by the last lap, I would have done it,” revealing he’d planned to make the switch on the final corner of the final lap, only for the team to talk him out of it when it highlighted a late safety car could make it impossible.

But he also admitted the thought of sticking it out at the front, pocketing the win and the extra championship points did cross his mind.

“You’ve got to be selfish in this sport at times,” Norris said. “You’ve got to think of yourself; that’s priority number one, think of yourself. I’m also a team player. My mind was going pretty crazy at the time.”

Nor was it a position he’d got himself into. “I got put into the lead rather than wanting to,” Norris said. “I feel like we made things way too hard for ourselves.”

How Norris moved ahead —and back again

Piastri had been in control of the race from the start, where a better launch from second place allowed him to dive up the inside of Norris into the first corner and take the lead before building up a 3.5-second buffer in the opening stint. Teams will typically give priority to the driver who is ahead on the track to pit, but McLaren opted to bring Norris in first for the opening round of stops on Lap 17 to cover off the threat of Hamilton, who was picking up pace after stopping earlier in search of an undercut. Piastri came in one lap later, the gap only shrinking by a few tenths.

Piastri eked out the gap back up to 4.4 seconds, but some traffic and struggles for the Australian on the hard tire allowed Norris to halve the gap. The McLaren drivers knew they were free to race, and the 1-2 looked locked in.

LAP 61/70

McLaren want Piastri in P1 but Norris is faster, he's built the gap to 5s.

Lando: "Tell him to catch up then, please!" 📻#F1 #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/mWA7RPEvuZ

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 21, 2024

But the pit wall was concerned that a slow stop or a mistake could open the door for Hamilton and Verstappen, lurking only seven seconds back and on slightly different strategies, to snatch the win away. Given Norris was the driver with less of a buffer, he was called in first on Lap 45.

McLaren had wanted Piastri to go longer to cover off Verstappen, who was trying to build a tire delta, only for Piastri to say its target lap to pit was “ambitious” on the radio. His race engineer, Tom Stallard, told him not to worry about Norris and to focus on pushing as hard as possible.

When Piastri did pit two laps later, Stallard immediately told him he’d emerge a couple of seconds behind Norris but reassured him the lead would be returned.

“We knew that by going first with Lando, that could have been the situation,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said after the race. “But we wouldn’t have done it if we weren’t sure that this would be fixed.”

Joseph immediately urged Norris to resolve the situation, telling him to “re-establish the order at your convenience.” He then warned Norris about overusing his tires at Turn 4 and Turn 11, a creative if unsubtle way of asking him to slow down. When there was no reply, Joseph was cunning enough to ask Norris for a radio check. When Norris said he could hear him “loud and clear,” Joseph replied: “OK, save the tires in Turn 4 and Turn 11 then, please.”

With 16 laps to go, Joseph became more direct, telling Norris: “We do want to let Oscar through.” At this point, Norris snapped back: “Well, you should have boxed him first then, surely no?” He didn’t understand why the strategy had played out as it did.

Norris then said it was on Piastri to speed up and catch him to make the switch possible, except Piastri, by his own admission post-race, “wasn’t quite as quick as I needed to be” to do so. Joseph made this clear to Norris: He had to make the switch himself. “You’ve proved your point, and it really doesn’t matter,” Joseph said.

“I’m fighting for a championship, am I not?” Norris fired back. The seven extra points he’d get for winning were playing on his mind, particularly as Verstappen was enduring a miserable, frustration-filled race he’d finish down in fifth.

In the end, Joseph’s point about the possibility of a safety car ruining his last lap, last corner plan made Norris slow down. “They said if there was a safety car all of a sudden, and I couldn’t let Oscar go through, then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot,” Norris said. “Then I was like, yeah, fair point.”

Piastri’s day

Piastri, ever calm and unflappable, said he was always sure Norris would give him the place back. “I don’t think I was really concerned,” Piastri said. “We’d spoken about it at the timing of the stop that we would sort it back out. I had full trust in everyone in the team, including Lando, that we would make that happen.”

Norris was eager to avoid framing it as a race win he’d given up, noting it was never his in the first place. “I know everyone is going to say that as a story, that I gave up the race win,” Norris said. “I didn’t. I boxed first. Naturally, you’re always going to undercut, so the team gave me this position, and I gave it back. Nothing more than that.”

He also said there was no need to reassure Joseph earlier that he would give the place back. “I know I was always going to give it back unless they changed their mind on what they were saying,” Norris said. “And they didn’t, so all good.”

Stella, the catalyst of McLaren’s remarkable turnaround in the past 18 months, also understood Norris’s thinking about questioning the call. “He’s a racing driver,” Stella said. “Mention to me a racing driver that would have not done it?” Stella noted it could be “entertaining to talk about the controversial aspect” of the calls, “but it would be unfair not to talk about the resolution which happened according to our way of going racing.”

Yes, this was a show of Norris’s sportsmanship. But the time it took to get there and the associated terseness on the radio made this into a bigger flashpoint for McLaren than it needed to be on Sunday.

But the resolution and the race result were fair. This was Piastri’s day. And there’ll be many more to come.

Top photo: SIPA USA

Luke Smith is a Senior Writer covering Formula 1 for The Athletic. Luke has spent 10 years reporting on Formula 1 for outlets including Autosport, The New York Times and NBC Sports, and is also a published author. He is a graduate of University College London. Follow Luke on Twitter @LukeSmithF1