Norris won the Hungarian Grand Prix from pole, 15.1 s ahead of Verstappen, with Antonelli third. A pole-to-win result usually means a quiet afternoon. This one was not quiet. By the timing order at the line, Norris led 34 of the 70 laps. His teammate Piastri led 25, Antonelli 10 and Verstappen one. There were three retirements: Bottas on lap 13, Pérez on lap 48, and Piastri on lap 55 while he was running second.
Race trace, full race: every driver's position, lap by lap.
Piastri's race to lose
Piastri started third and was leading at the end of lap 1. Leclerc, who started second, was fifth. Through the first stint Piastri stayed 0.9 to 2.0 s ahead of Norris. He stopped one lap before Norris and was still ahead once the stops had played out. On lap 32 he led by 0.7 s, and the race looked like his to lose.
The turning point: six more laps on the hard
Piastri made his second stop at the end of lap 33. Norris stayed out until lap 39 on hard tyres that were already 16 laps old, and lapped between 84.5 and 84.7 s for those five laps. Piastri's new hards did not turn into lap time at once. He ran 83.9 and 84.1, then 85.5 and 86.4 on laps 37 and 38. When Norris came back out on lap 40, he was 2.1 s ahead. That is a swing of 2.8 s in his favour across the stop. The timing data cannot tell us why Piastri's laps 37 and 38 were slow.
Antonelli's long stint, and the pass on lap 46
Antonelli started seventh and ran a different race. He went 22 laps on mediums and then 31 on hards, which put him in the lead whenever the others stopped: laps 18 to 22 and 41 to 45. Norris on fresh hards ran 82.7 to 83.4 s on laps 41 to 44 and cut a 5.1 s gap at the end of lap 41 to 0.4 s at the end of lap 45. He took the lead on track on lap 46. Antonelli made his second stop on lap 53.
The Virtual Safety Car
Piastri stopped on lap 55. His gap to Norris had grown to 12.9 s. The Virtual Safety Car came out on lap 56 and ended on lap 57. Norris, Leclerc and Hamilton all stopped under it for softs. Norris's lead over Verstappen, who had stopped for the last time on lap 41, fell from 17.0 s to 5.4 s, but he kept the lead. On the softs he lapped as fast as 82.5 s against Verstappen's 83.4 to 84.3, and he finished 15.1 s clear. Verstappen ran the last 29 laps on a single set of softs and finished second from fourth on the grid.
The timing alone cannot show whether Norris would have stopped a third time without the Virtual Safety Car. We leave that question open.
Two stops against three
Antonelli's second stop came two laps before the Virtual Safety Car. He was sixth on lap 55. The cars ahead of him stopped under the Virtual Safety Car, and by lap 58 he was third. He stayed there to the flag. Both Ferraris stopped three times. Leclerc started second and finished fourth, and he set the race's fastest lap, 1:22.000 on lap 58. Hamilton crossed the line 4.3 s ahead of him, but a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane dropped him to fifth.
After eleven rounds Antonelli leads the championship on 219 points, with Hamilton on 169 and Russell on 160.