BUDAPEST: Max Verstappen and Lando Norris did little to enhance their reputations on Sunday when a calm and mostly assured drive by Oscar Piastri set an example and carried him to a controversial victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
On a day when teams’ radio transmissions of dialogue with their drivers over-shadowed an intriguing race, the tetchy and sometimes outright rude behavior of the two leading championship contenders set a dismal example. It also offered evidence that both struggle to cope with the pressures of expectation as their teams, Red Bull and McLaren, vie for the constructors’ championship. Defending champions Red Bull hold a diminishing lead as their rivals reel them in. AFP Sport looks at three things we learned from the weekend’s drama at the Hungaroring:
Out of control Verstappen
Three-time champion Verstappen stayed up until three in the morning to compete in a late-night session of on-line simulated racing before the race. He was, as anyone might be, not at his sunniest on Sunday.
Tetchy, irritable and abusive, he finished a frustrated fifth after a poor performance highlighted by his profanity-riddled outbursts at race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, a collision with old rival Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and a vulgar post-race response to his critics. He had indulged in late-night gaming in May before winning the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and, unchecked by Red Bull, clearly felt he could do it again. But not this time. As the charming Piastri led Norris home, with the aid of clumsily-administered team orders that corrected a strategic error by the McLaren team, to claim his maiden victory, the contrast was stark.
Red Bull’s troubled team boss Christian Horner, who faced claims of inappropriate and controlling behavior against him earlier this year, said the team would speak to Verstappen. "He knows exactly what’s required and we trust his judgment,” said Horner.
"I think people draw conclusions. Max knows what’s required, he knows what it takes to drive a Grand Prix car and to win and be a world champion. We always work as a team and whatever discussions of how to reprove will always not take place in the media. "You’ve just got to work harder to find incremental gains. We know we have to improve in the second half of the year.” Without a win in three races and only three in the last eight, Verstappen’s waning form and behavior represent a major part of the challenge ahead.
Piastri emerges from Norris shadow
While McLaren demonstrated superior all-round performance in qualifying and race, to lock out the front row and finish first and second, it was Piastri’s composure that caught the eye as he became Australia’s fifth winner of a Grand Prix race.
At 23, he became also the first driver born in this century to triumph in an F1 race, and deservedly so in spite of a minor controversy over team orders that was handled with insufficient clarity. By requesting Norris to move aside ‘at your convenience’, McLaren invited him to consider his options. It was to his credit he conceded the team was more important than his own title ambitions as he ‘sacrificed’ seven points. McLaren will learn. So, too, Norris. Hamilton’s class is temporary
Hamilton’s drive to an unprecedented landmark 200th podium finish, surviving a collision with the aggressive Verstappen along the way, demonstrated that class is permanent, even at the age of 39. — AFP