Lando Norris finally kickstarted his Formula 1 title defence with a victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix, ending the first half of the season on a high note. McLaren dominated the weekend and Norris secured his first win of the year, cutting into Kimi Antonelli's championship lead.
Norris eyes late charge
After the race, Norris joked about his points deficit: "How many points behind am I? 91? [Antonelli] should feel the pressure, that's for sure. 91, that'll be done in like two races... or 10." He added: "The pressure is on him, for sure, there's no pressure on me. I'm feeling confident and they've been making more mistakes as a team. We have made less and we've certainly come on strong."
Norris believes McLaren's recent upgrades are working and that they can continue to challenge Mercedes. "I still expect them to win races. I expect us to win more races, we just need to be perfect from here on out, for the whole year. We need to improve the car still. It was certainly better [here] and certainly the quickest all weekend, from qualifying to the race, but not every race is going to be this simple and are we going to be as quick, so we need to work hard to try to get the car to be this good everywhere. If we can, then maybe that's a genuine question."
Antonelli limits damage
Antonelli finished ninth after a qualifying grid penalty but secured his ninth podium of the season. The teenager said: "We had to really fight for it. But Ferrari, McLaren, they brought upgrades so it was kind of expected. It's going to be very tight. McLaren did a massive step forward and Ferrari was quick. You can never write off Max [Verstappen] and also George [Russell] is going to be back in shape for sure. We just need to really keep raising that bar and come back stronger, because it's going to be a really big push."
Russell's wretched luck continues
George Russell, the pre-season favourite, endured more misfortune. A water leak cracked his engine in qualifying and his Mercedes went into anti-stall at the start, dropping him to 19th. He recovered to seventh. Russell said: "Add it to the list of things that have happened in this first half of the year and pray that things calm down in the second half. Honestly, I'm just staying positive because I've gone through being so disappointed with everything that has happened in this first half of the year. At one point, you just have to pick yourself up and accept that there's a lot of things out of your control that may work against you. There are things in my control I need to do better and I'll continue to work on that. Of course, I'm not happy with how things have gone, but I'm going to stay positive and keep on pushing."
