Lando Norris lost crucial points in Hungary after being forced to give up the race win for his teammate Oscar Piastri, especially considering the massive deficit to Max Verstappen in the championship battle. Former F1 mechanic Marc Priestley believes that this will give rise to a power struggle within the McLaren team.
In his breakdown clip of the Hungarian Grand Prix on YouTube, Priestley mentioned how Lando Norris needs to be more aggressive and less compliant if he ever wants to win a championship. He noted,
“I think there’s an inadvertent power struggle which will begin to emerge between Lando [and Oscar Piastri], who, if he’s got any ambitions of becoming world champion needs to get his elbows out, needs to get feisty, needs to stamp his mark on the championship, and needs to be selfish.”
Priestley backed his point by giving examples of drivers like Max Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel, and Fernando Alonso, all of whom would never have given up the lead of the race even if they were in a distant championship fight. While Verstappen’s unfortunate P5 finish did allow Norris to close the gap down to 76 points in the standings, he could have brought the gap further down, to 69 points, had he won the race, or even 68 points, if he got the fastest lap of the race.
Despite all the ifs and buts, the ex-McLaren mechanic remained firm in his stance that McLaren failed to manage a situation that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.
Why did McLaren get itself into the dramatic situation anyway?
Having been involved in Formula 1 for a long time, Priestley tried to reason why McLaren played out their strategy as they did. While he thinks that they didn’t have any real threat from the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, teams are hardwired to err on the side of caution.
And that’s why he said that it was understandable for them to cover Hamilton, but the way they handled the driver swap was patronising to Norris in a way. He explained how the young British driver would have been disappointed having to give up only his second race win due to a bad strategy call from McLaren, who should have pitted Piastri first as he was the race leader.
McLaren drama begins today #HungarianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/a6cmk1r34n
— F1 Radio Messages (@F1RadioMessages) July 21, 2024
The same is true for Piastri, who, after leading the race from the start was unnecessarily put into a situation where he had to catch up to his teammate who was much faster in the final stint. Priestley concluded McLaren has a lot to learn from the Hungarian GP despite having secured the best possible result for the weekend.
