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Lando Norris ended the first half of the Formula 1 season with a victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix that he described as “one of my best performances”.<\/b><\/p>\n
It was a drive that had been a long time coming, after a difficult start to the season for the reigning world champion and his McLaren team.<\/p>\n
But when McLaren finally gave him a car of the performance level he had become used to in the past season and a half, he more than made the most of it.<\/p>\n
While Ferrari, the pre-race favourites, floundered and made, in the words of their team boss Frederic Vasseur “too many mistakes”, Norris and McLaren were almost perfect.<\/p>\n
Even in the context of Kimi Antonelli’s stellar start to the season for Mercedes, this was one of the most impressive and convincing victories of the season.<\/p>\n
Norris’ one mistake was on the first lap. He converted his pole position into a lead at the first corner, only to misjudge the grip available at Turn Two, slide wide, and gift his position to team-mate Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n
It looked to have been a potentially fatal error to his victory hopes on a track where overtaking is all but impossible between evenly matched cars on similar strategies, but Norris stayed calm.<\/p>\n
Seeing he could easily keep pace with Piastri despite being in the dirty air, he said he always believed the win was on.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t my finest Turn Two,” Norris said, “but after that, seeing what my pace was like and I was just better in every sense, in terms of degradation and pace, I was convinced I could still win the race.”<\/p>\n
Trapped, Norris begged for a different strategy to give himself a chance of victory, and eventually circumstances presented it to him.<\/p>\n
Around half-distance. McLaren pitted Piastri to cover off Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari, which had just stopped for fresh tyres. That gave Norris clean air and he set a blistering pace.<\/p>\n
Piastri might still have held the lead, but for a collision with Carlos Sainz as he lapped his Williams. The Australian was angry after Norris came out ahead from his stop a few laps later – but at the Spaniard, not McLaren.<\/p>\n
“The fact I could keep up with Oscar on this kind of track, where it’s impossible to follow and impossible to overtake, I was within 0.8 seconds or something for, I don’t know, almost 40 laps, the fact I could do this is what gave me confidence that I’d win the race no matter what, whether he boxed early or late or whatever,” Norris said.<\/p>\n
“The pace advantage I had was huge today. But I don’t know why. The cars are identical, and I’ve just been feeling very strong lately.<\/p>\n
“I’ve worked on many areas from last year. I feel much more confident lately with how to extract performance, and I’ve worked a lot with my engineers to understand this car because it’s certainly not an easy car to understand and figure out how to drive on the limit consistently.<\/p>\n
“So, why? Just hard work. Hard work from my engineers and from myself to improve me as a driver and improve my driving. That is the answer.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n