Piastri won his first F1 race with the controversial McLaren double

Oscar Piastri will never forget this Sunday. The Hungarian F1 GP. Where Fernando Alonso began his legend in 2003, achieving his first victory, surely, Oscar Piastriwho learned from the Asturian when he was Alpine’s reserve driver in 2022, repeated such a feat by achieving his first F1 victory.

RACE RESULTS

Of course. What Piastri never imagined was that his first success would come this way. What happened this Sunday will cause a queue. He achieved this with a strange McLaren strategy that was about to take victory away from Oscar when he seemingly made it up to Norris. In the end, he had to give Lando back the position by following orders, but the truth is that Norris proved in that last stint that he was faster than his teammate.

In the end, Lando handed him the position. Piastri won against the British and a Hamilton 3rd after winning the battle against Max Verstappen, who was 5th after a spectacular accident in Hamilton with 7 laps to go.

Piastri’s first time

After just a season and a half in F1, Oscar finds himself on his hands with what is now the best car on the grid at most circuits, better than the Red Bull of a Verstappen who has gone from winning on the one hand, having to drive a more difficult vehicle that was overtaken by the speed of the ‘papaya oranges’.

The one from Melbourne (April 6, 2001), at 23 years old, won his first victory since Saturday, after finishing second in the classification behind Norris, Instead of saying that his goal is to protect his theoretical leader, he aims to fight for victory. Lando started from pole and had a golden opportunity to redeem himself from his mistakes in the last few races. Especially, his bad start from the post in Barcelona. But again, he escaped in those first meters. Piastri stole his wallet with a better way out and took the inside.

Verstappen-Hamilton, brush your teeth before chaos

Here comes the first mess, the second chapter of the series of conflicts to come in F1 between two best friends who, race to race, could be less. Norris went wide in turn 1 and Verstappen, on the outside, took some time, on the outside of the turn. An exchange of insults began over the radio. Max is 2nd and blames Norris for firing him. Lando complained that he had to return the position. And finally he had to do it to avoid sanction from the FIA. Max is furious, warning that from now on he will “drive like this.”

The battle of strategies began. Max complained about his car and, from third place behind the two McLarens, he opted for a riskier plan. I had to do it at the speed of clockwork oranges. He chose to extend his pause. That earned him third position on the track with Hamilton.

Verstappen returned to the track 7 seconds behind and began to cut a lot of time from Hamilton with a tire 5 laps younger. The 2021 duel could be repeated, this time in a fight for third place. Max soon arrived, and on lap 35 he found his first choice. Hamilton opened up on him by overbraking in Turn 1. The Dutchman went for it, out of turn 2. And just as his orange tide was celebrating a spectacular overtake, Max went wide. He complains about the brakes. Hamilton passed him again. Verstappen lost any chance of winning and the podium slipped away from him, stopping again at his second pit stop and losing time to overtake Leclerc.

Verstappen finally caught Hamilton again on lap 62. Lewis’s defense was perfect and on lap 63, Max overbranded and hit Lewis. They held each other. They managed to keep going, but Verstappen lost ground to Charles.

Hamilton was third, Leclerc took advantage of the pressure and was 4th, and Verstappen was relegated to 5th place against Sainz (6th).

With the second stop came the controversy at McLaren

When Oscar had the race further in front, leading against Norris. McLaren was in trouble alone. They stopped Norris, who was 2nd, in theory, to defend themselves from a possible attack by the third, Hamilton, who had stopped earlier. Meanwhile, Piastri eventually stopped and that gave Norris the first position. Oscar could not understand what was happening. ?Will he miss victory in the pits against his teammate? They told him on the radio not to worry, that when he reached the level of English, they would return to the first position and his glory days would return. But he was 3.5 seconds away and had just spooked on his way out onto the track Lando had to slow his pace a bit for Oscar to catch up. “You should save tires,” they told him. “I wish we were different,” Lando replied. “Unimportant”, They answered him. But to Lando, yes. He wanted to win, but he knew it wasn’t his day.

“We know you’ll do the right thing”, they told him after a few turns, without Piastri cutting him off and not saying goodbye for a moment. Norris has the speed to win. He increased his lead to 4 seconds. Lando can win this race and it is clear. But McLaren’s pit error meant that after that stop, unless Oscar made a mistake, no matter what he did, victory would go to his team-mate.

With 10 laps remaining, they again insisted he save tires. “Tell him to catch me,” he aimed, with Piastri 5 seconds away. They benefited Lando in the pits, but he had better speed to chase his teammate without that mistake. He had to keep his head down and let her pass in the final turns. He has to give the victory to Oscar. It will carry a tail.

Sainz, 6th and Alonso, 11th

Carlos Sainz was 6th. He started from fourth position but his career was conditioned by a bad start. Hamilton overtook him with a faster car and had a faster pace in those first meters and was damaged by a block made inside turn 1. There he was passed by Leclerc and also by Alonso, who would be overtaken he went faster a few turns later. From there, from 6th place, he had no other choice.

Fernando Alonso, who started 7th, was compromised by the new tires at his disposal and finished 11th after an incomprehensible strategy by his team.

I only have new hard rubber and new medium after sorting through the choice of wheels. Insufficient. He had to start on soft rubber and stopped too early, too early, on lap 7. So, I had about 63 laps to do with one more stop, too many on a track with so much degradation. That threw away his chances of achieving a good place, going against the flow throughout the race, ending up in the points in 11th place.

In fact, 10th place could be his. He let Lance Stroll, his teammate, pass because he had a better tire, to see if he could catch up to 9th. He couldn’t do it but he didn’t give back Alonso’s position as the Canadian attacked Tsunoda until his last breath. Stroll reached the final points with 10th position, 4 seconds ahead of Fernando.