How Tyre Degradation and Strategy Delivered a Victory for Norris at the Hungarian Grand Prix

The Hungaroring has always been a race track where in order to win, race strategy is equal in terms of importance as much as speed.

The twisting, narrow track is notoriously resistant to overtaking, and with the summer heat baking the asphalt to over 45°C, tyre degradation becomes the invisible opponent every driver has to contend with. On paper, the 2025 race looked destined to be a two-stop race. Pirelli’s pre-race simulations suggested that a race strategy of running medium–hard–medium compounds that would provide an eight to ten seconds time advantage over 70 laps compared to any attempt to stretch the tyres for a one-stop.

Yet Norris and McLaren tore up the expected playbook, and by managing thermal degradation better than anyone else, they turned that risk into a race-winning strategy.

To start with, Norris was outqualified by Charles and Oscar and started 3^rd on the grid. They all started on medium tyres, but Norris failed to get the perfect start. From his starting position of third on the grid, he was squeezed out at Turn 1, slipping back two places to fifth behind Russell and Alonso. A quick recovery saw him repass Alonso by lap three, but frustratingly only to become bottled behind Russell’s Mercedes but in the process losing precious seconds to the leaders, Piastri and Verstappen. Behind the scenes the situation arising from Norris’s imperfect start resulted in McLaren’s strategy team being forced to reconsider and recalculate their initial race strategy. History and past experience had taught them that, at Hungary, the stopwatch is only part of the story. Track position can be worth as much as twenty seconds over the full race distance, given the difficulty of overtaking. A combination of these simple facts and the present race circumstances opened the door to an alternative approach.

Whilst Driver’s Championship rivals including teammate Piastri limited themselves to the received wisdom of a two-stop strategy, Norris, now in P5, was instructed to extend his opening stint on the mediums. This required Norris to show remarkable control drive with restraint in the sections that punished the tyres most, lifting and coasting through Turns 11 and 14 to bleed off lateral load and managing tyre temperatures. By proactively utilising these techniques, Norris was able to reduce tyre degradation giving him the ability to carry the red-walled tyres to lap thirty-one—six laps further than Pirelli’s models had projected as being safe The decision locked him into a one-stop race involving a long, 39 lap, final stint on the hard compound tyres.

From the moment Norris rejoined on new hard tyres his focus shifted from outright speed to tyre conservation over the remaining 39 laps. In order to do this, he was instructed to race around half a second slower than the car could manage, in order to reduce and control thermal degradation of the tyres.

In the meantime, Piastri like most of the other drivers followed a two-stop strategy whereas Lando’s one stop strategy gave him a valuable time saving of 21.145 seconds over Piastri, This allowed him to come out ahead of Piastri after his lone pit stop. Subsequently, Norris’s position as race leader would be shown to be critically important to him winning the race.

After his pit stop, in order to preserve his older tyres, Norris the race leader was lapping in the low 1 minute 20 second, compared to Piastri with his newer hard tyres who was able to push his pedal to the floor to lap in the range 1 minute 21 second and above. The differing race dynamics pursued by Norris compared to his rivals meant that whilst, despite being older, Norris’s tyre degradation rate was limited to three-hundredths of a second per lap, his rivals tyre degradation rate was much higher at five- to six-hundredths in their faster pursuit of the race leader. The limited rate of degradation meant that the tires stayed within their ‘peak’ and didn’t loose their grip as fast as the chasing pack’s did.

As the laps ticked down, the pressure mounted on Piastri. In his pursuit of the race lead, Piastri had the advantage of having relatively newer hard tyres. Normally when racing on fresh hard tyres a driver will be able to achieve times nearly eight-tenths of a second faster per lap, but most importantly, only in conditions of clean air [Air that flows in clear lines allowing the aerodynamics to work in the most effect way possible].

Ingeniously Norris’s strategy of a one-stop race was proving to be a master stroke in claiming the race lead, after Piastri’s second stop, thus denying his rival the potential benefit of clean air afforded to a race leader with which to maximise the speed advantage of racing on newer hard tyres.

Now for the first time in the Grand Prix, the destiny of a race victory was in Norris’s own control.

In simple practical terms the result was dependent on whether, Norris with a lead of 12 seconds, after Piastri’s second stop, could hold of his team mate in second place who was lapping faster on newer tyres.

However, Norris, with track position, was in control of the lines into Turn 1 and Turn 2. By forcing Piastri onto the inside on the dirty part of the track, he increased the risk of lock-ups and denied him the chance to benefit from his DRS advantage.

The decisive moment came with just two laps to go. Piastri lunged at Turn 1, braking deep and desperate, but the front tyres gave way and he slid wide, narrowly avoiding contact. Norris, who had anticipated the move, kept his car planted on the outside and swept back ahead. From there it was a matter of nursing the tyres for one final tour of the circuit. He crossed the line six-tenths clear of his teammate, a slender margin that told the story of a strategy executed to perfection.

On raw pace, the two-stop was quicker. But Hungary has always been a place where, due to the difficulty in overtaking, the value of track position can outweigh tyre life, and Norris’s calculated gamble showed that the stopwatch alone doesn’t dictate the race result. Norris made the one-stop work by; stretching the first stint beyond expectation to 31 laps, managing tyre heat cycles with clinical precision over second stint of 39 laps and by defending with composure in the final 2 laps.

On a team level Norris’s victory secured McLaren’s 200th Grand Prix win but more crucially in the race for the Driver’s Championship it narrowed Piastri’s lead to just nine points.

This was a masterclass in showing how an F1 Grand Prix is not only won in the cockpit but just as equally, if not more so, on the pit wall.

Norris’s race strategy at 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix will be go downs in the annals of F1 race history as an example of how discipline, strategy and control under pressure can trump reliance on pure race speed to deliver the ultimate race reward, P1!