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Leads have been swapped between team-mates many times in Formula 1 before, but it's rarely without controversy and that again proved to be the case between McLaren's drivers in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
McLaren had inadvertently handed Lando Norris the lead by pitting him before race leader Oscar Piastri at the final round of stops, with Norris subsequently resistant to the team's request to swap places - before ultimately relenting with three laps to go and letting Piastri through for a maiden grand prix victory.
Our contributors give their take on that controversy:
Loss of points worth it for Norris
Scott Mitchell-Malm
This could easily pay Norris back in the future. Better to drop seven points now and have the team and team-mate on side. Because it is colossally unlikely that these seven points will deny Norris the title.
And that’s the only thing that should have been a factor here. Were Norris seriously in title contention then it’s simple - ‘sorry Oscar, this can happen, as long as the 1-2 is secure then giving Lando a championship advantage is the priority’.
Instead, this wasn’t the time to go rogue and be selfish. So, in the end, Norris was right to yield.
It absolutely sucks to give up a second win but it’s not like he got there on his own. And it wasn’t bad race management or a mistake from Piastri that helped Norris out either - it was right to cover an undercut threat to the car most vulnerable. And it was probably right to pit Piastri another lap later to avoid the cars being side by side when Piastri came out the pits.
One-twos when the cars are close together can be tricky to manage. In the end, McLaren got it over the line in the right order. If anything, Norris only erred by waiting so long. Maybe if he’d inverted sooner he could have justifiably attacked Piastri with far greater pace.
McLaren wouldn’t have liked that but he’d have been well within his rights to race in that situation. I certainly wouldn’t have held it against him!
Poorly handled by Norris
Ben Anderson
It’s not Norris’s fault - at least not entirely - that he ended up in this situation, but the way Norris handled it was poor.
By waiting so long to comply with a team order that was so predictable, he created a needlessly stressful dynamic for his team - and McLaren management will now surely be wary of him if and when this situation arises again.
He would have been better off either complying as soon as asked - to save all the subsequent aggro in debriefs that’s no doubt to come - or simply following through on what turned out to be an idle threat to just grab the victory McLaren’s pit strategy handed him.
That would have been a selfish and inflammatory decision, but it would also have been in keeping with the ruthlessness expected of F1 champions.
Ultimately, Norris did the right thing here - because having botched the start he hadn’t earned the right to be ahead of Piastri again, or even lucked into it through a safety car or whatever. The championship is still a mathematical consideration of course, but it’s highly unlikely the seven points he’s conceded to Verstappen in Hungary are going to prove decisive.
But if you were always minded to play the team game, why wait so long? Doing it this way achieved nothing of any use to anyone.
Trust has been damaged
Glenn Freeman
Even though Norris eventually did as he was told, this needless incident will have damaged the trust within McLaren.
Norris might think he was just proving a point and was always going to follow instructions, but by dragging it out for so long and arguing so much on the radio, how sure can McLaren - or Piastri - be that he can be trusted in future?
I wouldn't be surprised if Norris's position in private is that he was willing to do this once, and only once. He'll be looking at the greats of the past (and some in the present) who have often put their own ambitions above their team's when it really counted. Perhaps he's decided that if he's ever going to become a great himself, he needs that selfish streak.
After the shambles of Silverstone a fortnight ago, this doesn't fill you with much confidence in the McLaren pitwall. It was a poor strategy call that put it in that situation in the first place, leaving McLaren and Piastri at the mercy of Norris's decision-making.
McLaren ignored the changing bigger picture
Matt Beer
McLaren went into the race with a correct and honourable position on what it would do if a strategy quirk swapped its drivers' order.
But by the final laps it was dealing with a very different situation to what it had on Sunday morning when it outlined that agreement.
The evidence that McLaren actually has a shot at closing down Max Verstappen in the championship fights (yes, both of them) grew and grew as the race went on. Not by enough to make it a no-brainer to yank Piastri out of the lead and hand it to Norris. But once race circumstances put Norris ahead anyway, and it pretty much coincided with Verstappen's race getting even worse and messier, things had changed.
McLaren had gone from being in the luxury position of being able to prioritise honour and harmony over its championship chances (because they were such a long shot anyway) to having to choose to actively compromise its best title hope just as his main rival was throwing positions away and ranting at his team.
Would it have been so bad for the plan to change mid-race and Piastri to get a radio message saying 'we're so sorry Oscar, but the big picture is that our drivers' title chance just got more realistic, Lando needs to stay ahead after all', or for a little more wriggle-room for a mid-race plan change to have been left in the strategy?
Norris isn't to blame
Gary Anderson
In the end, I think the decision to reverse the two was correct. McLaren talked to Piastri about the decision to pit Norris first to cover Hamilton and told him that it would put it right before the end of the race. The biggest problem was the team didn’t appear to talk to Norris about it.
I don’t blame Norris for dragging it out; he probably feels he had a chance to win in his own right if the team hadn’t made that call. However, that might have made it even more of a nail-bitter to the end.
At the moment, McLaren has two very competitive drivers who both need to agree that the team probably sees the big picture better from the pitwall than either of them from within the car. That needs to be made loud and clear to Norris and Piastri for the future and again confirmed every race morning.
The easiest way through this sort of situation is leave no surprises for halfway through the race.
Norris had to think about champion comparisons
Jack Benyon
I think Norris’s delay in giving up the lead was forced by questions that would have been asked of his title credentials had he just immediately handed the place back to Piastri when ordered.
You can imagine what people would've said had he done so: "Max Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher etc wouldn’t have done that, they would have kept the lead and dealt with the consequences."
It feels like the grandstanding nature of ignoring requests to cede was part of Norris showing some sort of insolence that's expected of a champion - in the vein of the aforementioned drivers.
But ultimately he did the right thing in handing the position back. Whether McLaren can keep its drivers happy if these scenarios arise again leads into a bigger debate on whether you have two strong and relatively equal drivers in your line-up or whether you have a prioritised driver and a number two. Red Bull has that set-up and has demonstrated the pros and cons of it.
Team orders marred McLaren's triumph
Samarth Kanal
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella acknowledged that, while he was “extremely pleased” that Norris carried out team orders to give Piastri his maiden win, no driver would be happy to give up the lead to their team-mate.
It therefore feels baffling that McLaren forced the issue so hard at the Hungaroring - and somewhat tainted a great day for the team on Sunday.
Having taken the lead while Piastri was in the pits, Norris was also much faster than Piastri in the closing stages of the race. That was when McLaren repeatedly badgered him with stern and somewhat intimidating radio messages that only made the situation even more fraught.
If Norris was struggling to pull away from Piastri then perhaps the decision to swap the drivers would have seemed more coherent - but the then-leading McLaren driver was growing his lead and it was almost comical to see him relinquish 5.5 seconds to his team-mate.
The only saving grace was that Norris did protest the team orders over the radio. Had he swapped over earlier, he might have caught Piastri up again - potentially causing another difficult situation and leading to some more tense radio exchanges.
McLaren can't let this jeopardise its progress
Rob Hansford
In many respects, McLaren’s handling of the situation mid-race isn’t really that important at all, especially since Norris did eventually give the position back to Piastri in the closing stages.
The more important aspect is how McLaren handles the two drivers in its post-race debrief and going forwards.
There will no doubt be tensions growing in all camps now - especially Norris's - and it needs to nip that in the bud fast.
Right now, it seems McLaren is starting to get the upper hand over Red Bull and it can ill-afford an intra-team rivalry if it's to build into something bigger than it needs to be.
It needs some calm heads and common sense to make sure its drivers can still work together, and more importantly trust each other, as they continue to pursue Red Bull.
It might have been a different story had both drivers been at the very top of the drivers’ championship, fully in contention for the title, but that’s not the current reality. The constructors’ championship however is a more realistic prospect and both the team - and more importantly - its drivers need to keep that in mind.
For now, the trust remains, but McLaren needs to make sure that it’s fully clear on its position as the season progresses.
If I was Piastri, I wouldn't be agreeing any time soon to any race situations where my fate is left in my team-mate's hands.
