Lando Norris held off McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri to take victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Norris made a one-stop strategy work to recover from a poor first lap in which he dropped to fifth position to win by 0.698sec from Piastri after a thrilling finish.

Piastri, on two stops, attempted to pass Norris several times near the end but was unable to do it despite some close moments.

Norris’s win gave McLaren its 200th F1 victory and helped him close to the gap in the championship to nine points to Piastri.

George Russell completed the podium in the Mercedes after overtaking Charles Leclerc late on.

Pole-sitter Leclerc finished outside of the podium in fourth, the Monegasque sending cryptic, furious messages to Ferrari on the radio several times during the race.

“This is incredibly frustrating,” complained Leclerc on the radio after being overtaken by Piastri. “We’ve lost all our competitiveness. If you just had to listen to me, I would have found a different way of managing those issues. Now it’s just undrivable. It’s a miracle if we finish on the podium.”

Fernando Alonso scored his best result of the season with a strong fifth place in a lonely race, as Aston Martin also secured its best weekend of the year with Lance Stroll finishing in seventh.

The Aston Martin duo were split by the Sauber of Gabriel Bortoleto, who scored his best F1 result yet with sixth.

Liam Lawson beat his former Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen to eighth position, the world champion enduring one of his worst races of the season on his way to ninth. Verstappen is under investigation for an incident with Lewis Hamilton when overtaking the Ferrari driver.

Kimi Antonelli returned to the points with a 10th-place finish in the second Mercedes.

Hamilton finished down in 12th, where he had started, a lap down on the race winner.

Story of the race

As Leclerc made a solid start from pole, Piastri and Norris battled it out at Turn 1, the Australian closing the door on his team-mate, who lost momentum and was overtaken by Russell and Alonso, immediately compromising his race.

Once DRS was enabled, Norris moved up to fourth, passing Alonso on the straight on lap 3, but by then the Briton was already five seconds off the leader.

Leclerc opened a nearly three-second gap to Piastri by lap 10, the Australian already being asked by his team if a one-stop race was possible.

Norris, meanwhile, was told that he needed to overtake Russell quickly, but the McLaren driver was struggling to get close enough to the Mercedes even with the DRS open.

Piastri was the first of the leaders to pit, on lap 19, in an attempt to undercut Leclerc, the McLaren driver switching from medium to hard tyres.

Ferrari responded on the following lap by pitting Leclerc, who also moved to hard tyres and rejoined the race and critically retained the advantage over Piastri.

Russell pitted too and so Norris moved into the lead.

Despite reporting that his tyres were gone, the McLaren driver delayed his pitstop compared to his rivals and accepted his team’s suggestion of going for a one-stopper.

“Yeah, why not?” Norris responded when told he would have to do 40 laps on the hard tyres.

Leclerc kept closing in on Norris, but the Ferrari driver was unhappy about something, sending cryptic messages to his engineer on the radio.

“We are going to lose this race. We are losing so much time,” Leclerc said on lap 30 while running three seconds behind Norris.

Norris finally pitted on lap 31, handing the lead to Leclerc, who had Piastri 1.5sec behind. Norris returned to the track in fourth, eight seconds behind Russell and 17 behind the leaders.

Leclerc made his second stop on lap 41, fitting another set of hard tyres after McLaren had bluffed by telling Piastri to pit to undercut his Ferrari driver.

Instead, Piastri stayed on track and was informed he finally had clear air in front.

Norris caught Russell on lap 43 after having erased the eight-second gap, but the Mercedes driver pitted on the following lap, clearing the way for the McLaren driver, who was nine seconds behind leader Piastri.

The championship leader made his second stop on lap 46, rejoining in third, 12 seconds behind Piastri and five behind Leclerc.

Piastri was quick to catch Leclerc and, on lap 51, overtook the Ferrari driver easily at the end of the straight, setting his sights next on Norris, who was eight seconds ahead.

Russell overtook a furious Leclerc for third with eight laps to go after a close call as the Ferrari driver changed his line too late under braking, angering his Mercedes rival, who called for a penalty.

Piastri caught up to Norris with five laps to go but, despite several attempts to overtake, the Australian didn’t find a way through and had to settle for second.

Hungarian GP race results