George Russell set the fastest lap of the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix with a 1:19.409, as the British driver managed to pilot his Mercedes to a third-placed finish at the Hungaroring.
Having started the race in P4, Russell managed to take advantage of a poor start from Lando Norris and moved ahead of the McLaren driver, who also fell behind Aston Martin‘s Fernando Alonso. Whilst Norris was able to clear Alonso quickly, Russell proved much harder to get past.
A move onto a one-stop strategy eventually saw Norris and Russell‘s races diverge, with the former going on to win at the expense of Oscar Piastri.
For part of the race, it seemed that Russell would be condemned to P4, but Charles Leclerc suffered a serious drop-off in pace once he moved onto the hard tyre.
Having shown consistently impressive pace for much of the weekend, Russell was able to chip away at the advantage that Leclerc had in P3 and eventually move past the Ferrari. It took patience from Russell, as Leclerc twice moved under breaking into Turn 1 as the British driver attempted the overtake.
Leclerc would eventually get a five-second penalty for making Russell‘s life much harder, and the former Williams man was left with a very respectable P3 which keeps him in the fight to be best of the rest in the drivers’ championship.
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Norris makes the one-stop work
Heading into the 2025 Hungarian GP, it seemed unlikely that anybody would be giving much thought to a one-stop race. That situation changed for Norris thanks to a number of factors.
Most importantly, he had a very poor start to the race and suddenly found himself down in P5, with two quick cars/drivers ahead of him in Fernando Alonso and George Russell. At the same time as that, it started to become clear that tyre degradation was not going to be as severe as first assumed.
The one-stop started to become a more credible idea, and when it was put to Norris by the team, he somewhat passively agreed that they may as well try it. If he stuck to the same strategy as those ahead of him, the win would have been out of the question.
Once he had moved onto the hard tyre, Norris managed to strike the perfect balance of being quick enough to get into the lead of the race, but keeping enough life in the tyres to ensure that when teammate Oscar Piastri eventually cruised up behind him with five laps of the race to go, he had enough grip to withhold the Australian and gain a very unlikely race win.
