McLaren F1 News: Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri relationship repaired through unusual means

Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, McLaren, Hungary, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 News & Gossip

Piastri reveals UNUSUAL Norris relationship healing process

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were involved in a controversial incident in Hungary

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Thursday 25 July 2024 21:57

McLaren star Oscar Piastri has revealed he was taken aback by how long it took Lando Norris to give him his leading position back at the Hungarian Grand Prix, but admitted that unusual methods have helped retain his relationship with the Brit.

Piastri stormed to victory last weekend, taking his maiden grand prix win, and helping his McLaren team to stay well in contention for the constructors' championship title.

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However, this was not without drama, as McLaren opted to undercut Piastri with Norris at the second round of pit stops in order to protect the team one-two, promoting Norris into first place.

Norris eventually gave his team-mate back his winning position with two laps to go until the end of the race, but not before multiple emotional team radio calls from his engineers who seemed to get more and more desperate as the laps ticked by.

Oscar Piastri won the Hungarian Grand Prix

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri achieved a McLaren one-two

Piastri and Norris share McDonald's

Piastri, meanwhile, was sat in second position wondering whether his team had just handed his team-mate a victory, but finally the Australian returned to the front and won his first Formula 1 race.

Much has been said about McLaren's strategy, and whether it was right to put Norris in a situation where he was leading a race by six seconds yet still had to give it up, but the team have insisted it was the right call to make.

Now, Piastri has been speaking ahead of the Belgian GP about whether he would have preferred a victory that wasn't so marred by controversy.

"I mean, in an ideal world, maybe," he told media ahead of the weekend.

"But you know, I think for me, I feel like I deserved it. And, you know, the last pitstop was only done that way, because we were in a team one-two, and there was full trust that we were going to reverse that.

"So for me, I feel like I deserve it, I don't feel like it was given to me or anything like that. It's not to say there's no things I could still do better. But I put myself in a good position at the start of the race. And if we were genuinely racing at that point, then we wouldn't have pitted the way we did."

Lando Norris admitted regret to how he managed his leading position

Piastri was then quizzed about his relationship going forward with Norris, and whether the pair have spoken much since the incident, to which he revealed some unusual methods of healing between the pair.

"We've not really spoken much about the race. We've shared McDonald's and played Monopoly. So, we're still on good terms – on the same terms. So we're all good. I think there's still a lot of respect there between us. And yeah, we know it goes both ways."

"I think I wasn't surprised [about Norris' team radio] because he's a racing driver winning an F1 race," Piastri added.

"It's totally natural to, to want to do that and give yourself every opportunity. Maybe it went on for a bit longer than I expected it to, but I think that's also something we need to discuss as a team, whether there would have been more opportunities to race each other if things had have been done a bit differently.

"We discuss a lot of things as a team, but you can't plan for every single scenario. This one admittedly had some nuances to it. That meant we were in a sort of an unprecedented position before the race so I'm not surprised at all that he wanted to keep the lead of the race."

Written by

Sam Cook - Digital Journalist

Sam Cook is a talented young sports journalist and social media professional who now specialises in Formula 1, having previously worked as a football journalist and a local news reporter for a variety of different brands.

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McLaren Lando Norris Oscar Piastri Hungarian Grand Prix