Oscar Piastri has shed light on why he opted against the aggressive one-stop strategy that helped McLaren teammate Lando Norris seal victory at the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, emphasizing that the risk-reward dynamic was fundamentally different in his position.
While Norris charged back from a sluggish start to claim his third win of the season, Piastri – who began the race in a strong position after qualifying on the front row alongside poleman Charles Leclerc –finished second.
The result marked another double podium for McLaren but left many fans wondering: why didn’t both drivers take the same strategic path?
“We wanted to try and win the race”
Speaking after the race, Piastri explained that although a one-stop was floated as a possibility, the team’s plan for him leaned toward the safer, more traditional two-stop approach.
“We did speak about it a bit before the race, so it wasn’t completely off the table,” he told the media. “In the race, I got asked about it. Very difficult to know from the cockpit what is going to be the best thing to do.”
The key difference, Piastri explained, lay in their respective roles on track. While Norris could afford to roll the dice in pursuit of a comeback, Piastri was actively defending his position at the front of the field.
“Like I said, when you’re the car behind, your risk-reward ratio is always much different. There’s always that.”
His initial goal was to beat Ferrari’s Leclerc – an objective that required action rather than reaction.
“I think we had to try and do something to beat Leclerc, because it wasn’t obvious that we just had enough pace to blow past him and go and win that way,” he said. “So we tried something. Was it the right thing in the end? I don’t know.”
Piastri also admitted he didn’t yet have a definitive answer on whether he could have mirrored Norris’s strategy and achieved the same result.
“Could we have matched Lando? That’s the question that I don’t have the answer to. I guess that’s the only thing,” he added.
“We wanted to try and win the race as well. The best way of trying to beat Lando is by trying to win the race as well. That was obviously an intention, but I think we’ll definitely analyse if there was something we could have done a bit differently.”
Nothing to Lose vs. Everything to Risk
For Piastri, the strategic nuance of Sunday’s race underscored a core truth of F1: a bold move for one driver might be a gamble too far for another.
“But it’s always much easier when you’re the car behind to take that risk,” he explained. “For Leclerc, there was virtually nothing to lose by trying a one-stop race. For myself, potentially there was.”
“We’ll look back and see if there was anything we should have done differently, but a two-stop was always the plan before the race. It wasn’t even really discussed that much about doing a one-stop, so it was certainly a gamble.”
Focus Forward, not Backwards
Despite seeing his championship lead over Norris cut to just nine points heading into the summer break, Piastri remains composed and unbothered by the tightening title fight.
“The biggest lead of the year has been 23; it’s not moved within 10 points for the last 10 races, almost,” he said. “I’m not really that fussed with that. Obviously, it would have been nice to have the extra points, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a trend.”
©McLaren
“One second different and the trend would have looked quite different today. Things happening in the last few races differently could have meant quite a different picture, but you can say that about pretty much every race this year and about every championship ever.
“I’m not concerned at all. I think the pace for the first half of the year has been very, very strong, and I think the last few races as well have been very good.”
“I feel like I’ve driven a lot of strong races, and it’s been very, very tightly fought, so I expect more of the same after the break.”
As McLaren rides high into the summer pause with momentum on both sides of the garage, the rivalry between Piastri and Norris is heating up – not just on track, but in the subtle chess game of strategy.
And if Hungary was any indication, the second half of the season is poised to deliver plenty more twists.
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