Data explained: McLaren’s decision in Hungary that almost cost Oscar Piastri maiden F1 win

Oscar Piastri took his first Formula 1 victory at the Hungarian GP and while the Australian had the race under control from the first corner, McLaren almost cost him his chance of victory by undercutting Lando Norris.

Despite having the race totally under control with both drivers from the start with a very strong first stint, taking advantage of the battle on-track between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen to widen the gap further in the second stint and simply having to be conservative with the tyres at the end, McLaren put themselves in the spotlight with a controversial decision from the pit wall.

How McLaren nearly cost Oscar Piastri maiden F1 win in Hungary

It was lap 46 when McLaren made their move. Oscar Piastri was leading by two seconds over Lando Norris while Lewis Hamilton was virtual P5 – pending Max Verstappen and Lando Norris’ pit stops – having stopped on lap 41. McLaren decided to pit Norris to cover for the Mercedes team’s early pit stop something they did correctly with Norris on lap 18, but not this time.

McLaren saw P2 threatened by this distant undercut from Hamilton whose intention was not to attack Norris, but to cover from a possible attack from Max Verstappen.

The gap between Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton was +9.9s just before the Mercedes driver’s last stop to fit the hard tyre. And on lap 46, before Norris’ stop, it was +24.928s with the average pit stop time loss being +20.520s.

Was Norris‘ P2 really in danger, and was it really necessary to leave Oscar Piastri’s victory in Lando Norris’ good faith? Let’s find out.

Comparing sectors 2 and 3 of Hamilton’s outlap, Lewis’s lap times with the hard tyre 19 laps fresher than those of Norris, and the time loss in the inlap of both drivers, Hamilton cut a total of 4.727s approximately to Norris.

In other words, Norris still had a +5.173s advantage over Lewis Hamilton when he left the pits, despite having lost almost 5 seconds in just 4 laps. As we can see, the gap was still considerable and only a bad pitstop or a mistake by Norris in his inlap to stop a lap later could have put him in a vulnerable situation. McLaren could have stopped Oscar Piastri earlier, on lap 46, without compromising Norris’ P2 if he had stopped on lap 47.

As mentioned above, Oscar Piastri’s lead over Lando Norris before the serious mistake of stopping Lando earlier was two seconds. How powerful was the undercut McLaren made to the race leader, and was there any chance that despite the undercut Piastri would have left the pits ahead of Norris if he had stopped one lap after?

Given that Lando Norris was on the medium tyre compared to Piastri’s old hard, the team already knew that the two-second advantage was going to vanish quickly and that Norris was going to gain the position. And so it was, there was no other option.

Only in sectors 2 and 3 of Norris’ outlap, Piastri had already lost +2.442s to Norris. Therefore, the lead was already Norris’ at that point.

Now, why did McLaren leave Piastri out for one more lap instead of stopping immediately after Norris? This is another big debate because even though he would have come out behind Norris, he wouldn’t have been so far behind and making the swap of positions would have been much easier and without so much drama over the radio later on.

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Perhaps they wanted to avoid a possible fight between the two, but in the end the cure was worse than the disease in this case.

Piastri finally pitted on lap 48, two laps later than Norris, and came out behind his teammate by +2.1s. Without a doubt, a tremendous mistake by McLaren, which was once again lacking in competitiveness. The one-two was so confident that they put themselves in a compromising situation internally by being ultra-conservative with a Hamilton totally harmless to them.

After many laps of radio messages that could have been saved with a bit more sense on the pitwall, Lando Norris did the right thing and the best thing for the team. He gave the position back to his team-mate who had run a better race and whose first Formula 1 victory was almost boycotted by McLaren.

It is not the first time that Piastri has been hurt by McLaren’s pitwall. In the last race at Silverstone, the team also ended any chance of victory for the Australian by leaving him out on a wet track instead of making a double pit stop.

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