Yahoo Autos Piastri had no doubts Norris would give him the lead back
Oscar Piastri says his first victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix will take time to sink in, but he never doubted Lando Norris would give the lead back to him before the end of the race.
The start of the race saw Piastri overtake Norris to lead, and he maintained that position until the final round of pit stops, when McLaren stopped Norris first and he undercut his teammate. Norris was then told to give the place back and did so with three laps remaining, for Piastri to secure his debut grand prix victory following his Qatar Sprint win last year.
“I would say it is [what I hoped it would be] — I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet and I’m not really the kind of person to get overly emotional,” Piastri said. “So I don’t think you’re ever really going to see that from me, but no, it’s an incredible feeling. It’s something I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid.
“We’ve had a couple of opportunities through the last few races that we’ve come very close too, and now to make it happen is an incredible feeling. But I’m sure with more time… I think in Qatar last year, that didn’t fully sink in until probably the season ended. This will probably be a similar kind of feeling. It’s just quite a cool feeling, but quite hard to describe and know how to feel sometimes.”
Norris pushed back on the team order to return the position to Piastri in the final stint before eventually doing so, but the Australian says he wasn’t worried that his teammate would defy the instruction.
“I don’t think I was really concerned. The only thing I was concerned about a bit was if there was a safety car, then it would have taken the situation out of our hands,” he said. “But 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.
“I’m sure it’s something we’ll discuss as a team. The information I had at the time was Lando was boxing early to cover Lewis [Hamilton] and I was going long to cover Max [Verstappen], essentially, because I knew that he’d stopped later and I think we were just being very safe.
“Of course, that naturally gave Lando an undercut and maybe made things a little bit more complicated than it needed to be, but I’m sure that’s something we’ll go through.”
