Team orders are back with a vengeance in Formula 1.
To be fair, team orders havent really left the worlds top racing series. But Sundays Hungarian Grand Prix provided the most glaring recent example.
Lando Norris pulled over from the lead with two laps to go to allow teammate Oscar Piastri to go by. Piastri held on ahead of Norris for the final two laps to score his first F1 win and become the seventh different winner in the first 13 races of the 2024 season.
Piastri led for much of Sundays race after he took the lead on the opening lap. He started second behind his teammate and took the lead after the first few corners after he, Norris and Max Verstappen went three-wide into the first turn.
Norris took over the lead on the final set of pit stops as he pitted earlier than Piastri in an apparent attempt to cover off the third-place car of Lewis Hamilton. The undercut that Norris got by pitting on lap 46 his fresher tires made up significant time to Piastri in the laps before Piastri pitted put him ahead of Piastri as the laps wound down.
McLaren made it clear that Norris needed to move back over and let Piastri pass. As you can imagine, Norris wasnt too keen on the idea. He waited until nearly the last possible time to let Norris go through as Hamilton was way back in the distance in third.
McLaren clearly had the two fastest cars throughout the course of Sundays race. And Norris got the lead fair and square when he pitted earlier. Even if his strategy was more defensive than offensive, it clearly worked out. If youre Norris or a Norris fan, you have every right to be annoyed with the directives at the end of the race. Especially when you consider that Norris is second in the standings to Verstappen and Verstappen finished fifth.
You can also make a case that Piastri would have a grievance if Norris didnt hand over the lead. He was easily in the lead until the final set of pit stops and could have pitted around the same time that Norris did. But Piastri was held out longer than Norris under the assumption that he would get the lead back, either via a pass on fresher tires later in the race or through the team orders that McLaren clearly had plans for.
Whether you like the idea of team orders or not, the demand for Piastri to pass Norris tarnishes McLarens first 1-2 finish since the Italian Grand Prix in 2021.
Verstappen finished fifth behind Hamilton and Charles Leclerc after he made an aggressive attempt to pass Hamilton in the late laps of the race.
Verstappen locked up his brakes entering Turn 1 with less than 10 laps to go and his car skidded wide into Hamiltons. The contact between Verstappens left rear wheel and Hamiltons right front sent Verstappens car into the air.
He was able to avoid crashing into anything, but he dropped to fifth behind Leclerc and never recovered.
Since Norris was forced to finish second, Verstappen is now 76 points ahead of Norris with 11 races to go. Had Norris finished first, the gap would be 69 points. If McLaren is truly now the fastest team in Formula 1 and Norris keeps chipping away at Verstappens points lead, those could be seven points that McLaren would like to have back at the end of the season.