Lando Norris explained why he complained to his McLaren team over radio midway through the Hungarian Grand Prix, eventually coming through to take his first Formula 1 win of the season.
The reigning World Champion lost his lead at the start of the race to teammate Oscar Piastri, but eventually took the chequered flag ahead of Max Verstappen and Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
But it was not all plain sailing, as Norris was forced to overcome teammate Oscar Piastri, who stole the lead off of him at Turn 1.
With the Australian holding the lead, Norris began to exert some frustration to his team, and told them that he was “miles faster”.
During tyre stops, Norris regained the lead, with Piastri being held-up by Carlos Sainz’s Williams, the pair touching, which made all the difference. And Piastri’s challenge ended when his McLaren ground to a halt soon afterwards, handing Norris an unassailable victory.
Speaking after the race, Norris, despite acknowledging the now-infamous ‘papaya rules’ element to McLaren’s game plan, explained why he became so frustrated.
“I mean I just want to win the race,” he said. “You know there’s certain rules we have as a team and we can’t harm each other’s race by being overly aggressive and wanting to win, but I want to win and I certainly had much much better pace than him.
“We had a much better chance of winning the race, so when I was stuck behind Oscar, Max was three, four seconds behind, and at that point, he’s still a threat ahead.
“There’s no threat and we have a lot more of a guarantee that we’ll win as a team anyway, so I wanted to box and undercut, because my pace would have been so good, I could have pulled away a whole pit stop window I think on him and box again if I needed to.
“Or I’d get him to box early and I think we’re on the fine line between boxing too early and harming both of our races, so that was just the best interest for the team which they rightly have to say back against me, but I want to do whatever I can to try and win a race of course.”
‘Small differences add up’ – Lando Norris details self-improvement
Norris’ win underlines a step up in performance from McLaren, the MCL40’s new upgrades suite working its magic around the tight, twisty Hungaroring.
But the #1 believes that he is also improving as a driver, too, something that may have gone unnoticed as he has not been in possession of the car to be at the front for most of this year’s campaign.
The first half of his title-winning 2025 campaign was fraught with mistakes and underperformance compared to Piastri, something he himself was quick to acknowledge at the time.
When asked if he feels he is driving better now than last season, Norris believed his Hungaroring victory would rank as “one of my best performances”.
“It’s hard to say, like obviously I drove a good race here in Budapest last year. I drove at this point, I started to have some good races in Monaco, Silverstone, here,” he said.
“Right now, today I would probably say was up there with one of my best performances in terms of extracting performance out of the car, being so close to the limit every single lap, so close that the team have to ask me to peg it back a little bit.
“Although it kind of hurts me saying it, because it doesn’t mean that you just win, but I feel like I’m doing a better job this year than I was last year and I have done for a little while and I’ve said that for a while.
“It just doesn’t mean you win the races like I said before, so today when we had a car. I think the words of when I said I think my performance is some of my best, today proved exactly that, that I could go out and win very convincingly and be on pole in a good car, so yeah, I’m doing a better job and that’s because of just working in many different areas, some away from the track with my team and some here at the track as well, so just work in as many areas as possible, a lot of small differences add up and you see the result today.”
READ MORE – F1 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix – Race Results
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