Piastri: I had a lot of trust in the team and Norris

Piastri put himself in a prime position to win Sunday's Hungarian GP after overtaking teammate Lando Norris at the start of the race.

But a questionable McLaren strategy meant he lost his lead after the second round of pitstops Norris who set out on building a gap hoping to take his second career F1 win despite continuous calls from the Papaya pitwall to slow down and allow Piastri to retake the lead.

After resisting to relinquish his lead, Norris finally let Piastri through on two laps from the end, but the latter insisted he had faith his teammate would do the right thing.

"I had a lot of trust in the team and Lando," Piastri told Sky Sports F1 after the race. "Lando was fast at the end, that was clear, but the strategies we went onto meant it was effectively an undercut for him and I think it was a fair decision to swap us back at the end.

"We discussed a lot last night and this morning about how the race would look. We were free to race each other and both try to win the race as long as we finished one and two and I think that’s more or less what we did.

"I think a lot of really good planning, a lot of good discussions and open discussions allowed us to have a lot of trust and respect for each other and not have to worry about situations like this.

"In Lando’s position I could understand he’d want to keep position. Of course it’s only natural," Piastri admitted. "From my point of view, I did all the right things in the first half of the race until the last pit stop and the only reason we pitted the cars the way we did was to cover off different people and that naturally meant that he undercut me.

"Of course it’s never the easiest thing to work out, but I think we are all respectful and trustful enough to see the reasons why, no matter what side of it we are on," the Aussie concluded.

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella reflected on the radio exchange between Norris and his engineer who at one point was pleading for the driver to obey the team orders.

He told Sky: "I think it was a little bit more than that single comment and message from Will [Joseph]. There’s an entire approach to racing that we have with our team and drivers.

"We are in this trajectory together. None of us – the team, Lando or Oscar – can go alone. That’s the message that we discussed on Sunday morning. With racing drivers you need to refresh this message. That’s why we have this meeting every Sunday.

"We are extremely pleased by how our drivers are supporting the trajectory of McLaren which is incredible. For me, that’s the news today. We can talk a little more about Lando and Oscar, but the message is there is a P1-2 in qualifying and a P1-P2 in the race.

"That’s incredible and I would like to thank and praise all the work of the men and women at McLaren for making this possible," Stella concluded.