Lando Norris claimed his first win of the season from pole position at the Hungaroring, while Lewis Hamilton admitted Ferrari could have won had he not incurred two penalties over the weekend.
Lando Norris won the Hungarian Grand Prix, held at the Hungaroring on July 26, 2026, securing McLaren's first win and his own first victory of the season. The driver started from pole position, but his teammate Oscar Piastri took the lead at the start, only to later retire due to a gearbox failure. Second place went to Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, while third on the podium was taken by Kimi Antonelli, the current drivers' championship leader at Mercedes.
At the start of the race, Piastri executed, according to BBC commentator Harry Benjamin, an exceptional move into Turn 2 to take the lead and held it through the first part of the race. The Australian could not match the clean pace of his teammate, and after Norris overtook him via a pit strategy, he seemed resigned to second place, until a suspected gearbox failure ended his race before the finish. Benjamin noted that the result did not reflect the quality of his driving over the weekend.
Lewis Hamilton, who missed pole position in qualifying by just 0.012 seconds, entered Sunday's race with a three-second, or three-place, grid penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri during qualifying. During the race itself, he earned an additional five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane, which ultimately dropped him from a provisional fourth place to fifth at the finish. Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported Hamilton's post-race comments, in which the British Ferrari driver admitted: "Avremmo potuto vincere" ("We could have won").
According to assessments from BBC Radio 5 Live commentator Harry Benjamin, Hamilton was the fastest Ferrari driver throughout the weekend, but the two penalties negated much of his good work. His teammate Charles Leclerc lost positions at the start, both to Piastri and to Hamilton, and finished the race on track in fifth. After Hamilton's penalty, Leclerc was promoted to fourth place, as noted by La Repubblica in its headline, with the remark that the regret belonged to "the other Ferrari driver," i.e., Hamilton.
Antonelli, who leads the drivers' standings, had a challenging qualifying session as he failed to slow sufficiently under yellow flags, costing him a better starting position. Despite this, the young Italian in Mercedes managed to climb from seventh place to the podium, holding off the Ferrari drivers until the end. Verstappen, according to Benjamin's assessment, secured second place despite a troublesome Red Bull car throughout the weekend, inheriting the position after Piastri's retirement.
In the remainder of the order, George Russell in the other Mercedes staged a strong recovery after an anti-stall system on the start dropped him from sixth to 21st place, and his qualifying was disrupted by a water leak. Still, he managed to fight back to seventh at the finish. Isack Hadjar finished sixth for Red Bull, while Liam Lawson in the Racing Bulls, after admitting he underperformed in qualifying, delivered a solid drive to eighth, ahead of teammate Arvid Lindblad in ninth. Nico Hulkenberg in Audi scored points after making it into Q3, and Carlos Sainz in Williams earned a penalty after a collision with Piastri during the lap before the Australian was lapped.
For the new Cadillac team, the weekend was extremely difficult. Sergio Perez qualified last and started from the pits after setup changes, but was forced to retire due to a front-left failure. Valtteri Bottas, who started ahead of Perez, also had to retire due to brake overheating before making any progress. Oliver Bearman in Haas received a five-second penalty for ignoring blue flags, further compounding a difficult weekend for the team.
