McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has explained the Formula 1 squad’s thinking behind its second pitstop sequence in the Hungarian Grand Prix amid frustration from Oscar Piastri over his run-in with backmarker Carlos Sainz.
In their quest to deliver a first grand prix win of the season, both Piastri and team-mate Lando Norris showed frustration in the heat of the moment, belying the sense of urgency for the reigning world champions to gain a foothold in the 2026 campaign.
Early season dominator Mercedes had been challenged by a resurgent Ferrari and its innovative, heavily upgraded car. But last year’s dominant team had started 2026 on the back foot, so when a significant floor upgrade finally appeared to put McLaren in the mix, neither Norris nor Piastri needed any further encouragement to put it to good use.
Having done the heavy lifting by putting the MCL40 on pole, Norris couldn’t afford any slip-ups on lap 1, but did exactly that by drifting offline through the dust in Turn 2. Having had a disappointing qualifying session, Piastri benefitted from penalties to take third on the grid and then swooped past Norris into the lead.
With overtaking extremely difficult without a tyre offset, that was Norris’ afternoon ruined. And trying as he might to pressure Piastri into a mistake, Norris soon started hinting at how much quicker he could go in clear air. The situation continued until the second stint, when Norris was requested to be called in first.
“We can’t,” race engineer Will Joseph said. The usual etiquette is that the leading car gets pitstop priority and in this case Piastri had earned that right by passing Norris fair and square on lap one.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images
So when on lap 34 Hamilton, who had already pitted several laps earlier, was 25 seconds behind the leader and closing, the thinking at McLaren was that it needed to cover off the Ferrari as its main threat.
“When Hamilton pits, he is in condition to undercut the two McLarens, so we needed to respond,” Stella explained. “Oscar was in the lead, and we thought that he was the right car to stop for that.”
Piastri emerged ahead by four seconds, leaving Norris a gap to slot into as well. But through a combination of Piastri being baulked by Williams driver Sainz and Norris finding extra pace in clear air, Norris made a rare overcut work to take the lead, much to Piastri’s chagrin.
“Get out of the f****** way you idiot, oh my god,” Piastri raged at Sainz, before redirecting some of that frustration towards his own team when he saw his chance to win the race evaporate.
“Nice of you guys to factor that one in by the way, thanks,” he said sarcastically.
Afterwards Piastri conceded that McLaren had no other choice but to pit him when he did, and that in the heat of the moment his racing driver brain had taken over from reason, hoping McLaren could somehow rectify the injustice.
“When Lando came out ahead, I knew I had no pace to go and attack him, so I knew my chances of winning the race were done from there,” Piastri acknowledged. “I felt maybe the team could have not pitted Lando if it was a two-car race, but I know it’s not a two-car race. They can’t just not box Lando because of something out of his control and out of my control.
Oscar Piastri retired from the race with a late gearbox failure.
Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images
“From that side of things, it’s fine. I was just very, very pissed off in the moment about what happened. Without getting crashed into, I would have been ahead of Lando still.”
That’s also how team principal Stella saw it, and he revealed that Piastri had explained his team radio comments afterwards.
“Immediately after the race, Oscar clarified that his comment was a comment in anger,” Stella said when asked by Autosport for comment.
“There were a couple of unfortunate episodes. Obviously, the most important is the fact that Oscar had a collision with a backmarker. And at the same time, once Lando was released, then his pace was simply mega. I think he found half a second per lap. And this pace meant that Lando could be ahead of Oscar.”
He added: “I think Oscar understood it immediately. It’s absolutely understandable that when you lead the race for almost half [of it], and then you see yourself losing the lead because of an episode with a backmarker, then you may have a moment and make a comment in anger, but there’s absolutely no problem.”
By the same token, McLaren also couldn’t do much for the intrinsically faster Norris up until that moment. Stella explained that the pitwall had at least “evaluated all the options” in case the team had come under more significant pressure from behind, like swapping positions to let Norris try and build a gap, and then revert positions again at the end of the race if McLaren was still controlling a 1-2.
But Stella felt like Piastri had also “deserved an opportunity to try and win the race” by passing Norris at the start and then keeping him at bay.
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
“You constantly evaluate all the options,” Stella added. “You can look at what’s the way to score as many points for the team, but there’s also a way to be consistent with the way we go racing.
“I think up until the time Oscar pitted, Oscar had gained the lead in a fair manner with the action in corner one and two, so he deserved an opportunity to try and win the race. On other tracks, probably Lando might have overtaken Oscar, but in this case it’s difficult.”
With McLaren the pick of the field on Sunday, swapping the order didn’t prove necessary, but the team did try to calm a flying Norris down as it was managing various reliability concerns, both when he was chasing Piastri and when he was leading. Piastri’s eventual retirement through a gearbox failure suggested that was not an unwise decision.
“The main thing with Lando is that we were managing a couple of things from a reliability point of view, so there was absolutely no need to use kerbs that we then instructed a couple of times quite explicitly,” said Stella. “But Lando wasn’t [trying to] prove anything. He was in the lead, in clean air, and he just had a lot of pace in hand.”
In any case, McLaren’s first race-winning outing of the season brought back memories of its many team order quandaries over last year’s title winning campaign. With Piastri frustrated over his belated access to this weekend’s floor upgrade, having been made to wait until FP3 on Saturday, Sunday’s race only further put the spotlight on McLaren’s fairness mantra.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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