2025 Hungarian GP winners and losers: Lando Norris gains title momentum, Ferrari suffer ‘extremely frustrating’ weekend, Gabriel Bortoleto continues to shine, and more

For the 40th time, F1 took to Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday, August 3, held at the tight and twisty Hungaroring. 

With Lando Norris’ one-stop gamble earning him an important points swing in the championship battle, Ferrari suffering yet another disastrous weekend, and heroics from both Gabriel Bortoleto and Aston Martin, there is certainly a lot to discuss this week.

Sports News Blitz’s F1 writer Henry Eccles takes a look at the five biggest winners and losers to come out of the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix.  

Winner: Lando Norris 

After the first lap, it already looked like Lando Norris’ hopes of securing his third win in four races had been dashed, despite qualifying on the second row in P3. 

The McLaren driver did get away well off the line, but with his eyes purely focused on team-mate and championship rival Oscar Piastri, he quickly got gobbled up by George Russell at Turn 1, and then Fernando Alonso on the inside of the next corner. 

Once he had DRS, it only took until Lap 3 before Norris was back ahead of Alonso, but he did struggle behind Russell throughout his first stint. 

Out of the podium positions, Norris did not have a lot to lose and so decided to roll the dice on a one-stop strategy. 

While rivals ahead of him swapped their Medium tyres for Hards, opting for the two-stopper, Norris advanced into the lead and expertly managed his tyres until Lap 32. 

After a lightning-quick 1.9s pit stop from McLaren, he then made good use of his fresher rubber before his rivals could pit again, lighting up the timing charts with Fastest Lap after Fastest Lap. 

On Lap 41, Charles Leclerc, who had the lead before Norris’ one-stop strategy began, pitted for a second set of Hards and came out around seven seconds behind the Briton. 

Five laps later, Piastri boxed, and it then looked like he and Leclerc would go about hunting down Norris. 

By Lap 51, however, the Ferrari driver’s pace had fallen off a cliff, with the gap to Norris widening to nine seconds - Piastri had also caught up to the back of him and took P2 with complete ease down the pit straight. 

So, with 19 laps to go, it was just the two championship-leading McLarens fighting for the win, but on much fresher tyres, Piastri was surely the favourite. 

The Aussie did indeed make good use of his tyre advantage, and by Lap 65, he was within DRS range of his championship rival.

But Norris, whose ability to keep it all together in the high-pressure moments has been routinely scrutinised since 2024, looked Piastri-like in the lead - unnerved by the intense final few laps. 

Despite a late lunge from Piastri on the penultimate lap, Norris kept his lead, and crossed the line to secure a masterful victory. 

After a challenging start to the season behind his team-mate, Hungary was Norris’ fifth win of the season, his third since Round 11 in Austria. 

With the gap to Piastri in the Drivers’ standings down to just nine points at the mid-season break, and momentum on his side, Norris’ form surely means we will have a thrilling second-half shootout for the title between the two McLaren stars.

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Loser: Oscar Piastri

Admittedly, this one feels harsh given Piastri did not really put a foot wrong in terms of his own race execution. 

Unlike Norris last week in Belgium, Piastri made no mistakes as he chased his team-mate down, rapidly reducing the 12-second gap between them once he embarked on his final stint. 

As it turned out, the Aussie was more unlucky than anything, with Norris’ one-stop gamble paying off far better than even McLaren had expected. 

Norris even admitted post-race that while he did not think his race was over once he went onto the one-stop strategy, he was ‘more banking on a Safety Car or a VSC or something to bring me back into the race.’

Meanwhile, Piastri was left to ponder if McLaren could have given him what proved to be the race-winning strategy. 

“Very difficult to know from the cockpit what is going to be the best thing to do,” Piastri said post-race.

"When you're the car behind, your risk-reward ratio is always much different. There's always that.

“Could we have matched Lando? That's, I guess, the question that I don't have the answer to."

If there was anything to criticise Piastri on, it may be how he handled his battle with Norris once he caught up - on the penultimate lap, it almost ended in disaster.

Making a daring late lunge on the inside of Turn 1, Piastri almost took both his front wing off and Norris off the track, and was reminded of ‘how we go racing’ by his race engineer. 

After that polite telling off, Piastri didn’t get the same opportunity on the final lap, but defended his actions while speaking in the post-race interviews.

“I had to go for it and, you know, in hindsight, obviously you can say maybe I should have waited another lap, but I'm pretty convinced that even if I had waited one more lap, it wouldn't have changed anything.”

While he is still in the lead in the Drivers’ standings, some may wonder whether a few cracks are beginning to show in Piastri’s usually cool exterior, as it becomes more apparent that the 24-year-old certainly has his work cut out for him as Norris gains confidence.

Winner: Gabriel Bortoleto

This kid just gets better and better. 

After scoring his first points in F1 at the Austrian GP, Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto has only gone from strength to strength. 

While he did suffer a DNF at Silverstone due a spin in wet conditions, the Brazilian rookie responded with yet another points finish at Spa, finishing P9. 

This past weekend in Hungary, however, was easily his best in F1 so far. 

On Saturday, Bortoleto achieved Sauber’s highest qualifying finish of the season, securing P7, 0.03s ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. 

Things got even better during Sunday’s race, as Bortoleto got ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll on the opening lap to take P6, and stayed there until the chequered flag. 

The F2 champion also escaped an investigation for a false start, which appeared to have been an FIA mix-up as it was actually his team-mate Nico Hulkenberg that had made the error and received a five-second penalty.

For the opening part of the race, Bortoleto even found himself in a fight with F1’s very best, with two-time world champion, and his manager, Alonso just ahead, and four-time champion Verstappen behind. 

While he failed to get ahead of Alonso, Bortoleto drove an impressive race to hold onto P6, his highest finish in F1 yet, and was voted Driver of the Day. 

“Honestly [it] was a great race and I'm glad I was fighting with these guys at this moment of my career,” Bortoleto said in a post-race interview.

“We did an amazing job, the team gave me an amazing car for today's race.

“We managed to put everything in place. The strategy was great. I don't see how we could finish this half of the season better.”

Along with his team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, Sauber have indeed been on top form, scoring points in the last six races and now sitting P7 in the Constructors’, just one point behind Aston Martin and 19 off Williams in P5. 

Losers: Ferrari

After shocking the world, and himself, by achieving pole position on Saturday, things were looking good for Charles Leclerc at the Hungarian GP.

The Monegasque star took Ferrari’s first pole of the year, and his first ever front-row start at the tricky Hungaroring. 

The race even got off to a perfect start for Leclerc, as he stayed ahead of the McLaren of Piastri after the first round of pit stops. 

But as the race went on, and Norris’ strategy started to pay dividends, Leclerc’s lap times started to suffer. 

The Ferrari driver was overtaken far too easily by Piastri on Lap 51, and lost the final podium spot to Mercedes’ George Russell just 11 laps later. 

The battle between Russell and Leclerc was fierce.

After being accused of moving under braking a lap earlier, an agitated Leclerc really did shut the door on Russell into Turn 1, and received a five-second penalty for doing so. 

The penalty did not affect his race in the end, as he finished 22 seconds ahead of Alonso, but 14 seconds adrift of Russell’s P3. 

Reflecting on his race, Leclerc explained the dramatic drop-off in pace as having something to do with a chassis issue, a different problem to what he had initially expected. 

“From around Lap 40 we had a problem with the chassis, so now I’ve had more details about it. In the car, obviously I had no idea what was going on. I mean I had an idea, but it was a wrong idea because I thought it was something that was in our control,” he said to the media.

“It’s just extremely frustrating when you are fighting for a win and when we had the pace that we had at the beginning of the race, and we lose absolutely everything later on, it’s very frustrating.”

On the other side of the Ferrari garage, however, for Lewis Hamilton things were much worse. 

After getting knocked out in Q2 on Saturday with a P12 qualifying finish, a downbeat Hamilton said that he was ‘absolutely useless’ and Ferrari ‘probably need to change driver.’

The seven-time world champion failed to make any improvements on Sunday, and finished exactly where he started, only to then double down on the comments he had previously made.

“When you have a feeling, you have a feeling. There’s a lot going on in the background that is not great,” Hamilton said to Sky Sports.

Hamilton also commented that he was glad the race was over and he was ‘looking forward to going away.’ 

While F1 fans have unfortunately got accustomed to a glum Hamilton following a race weekend, this does feel like a new low for the former Mercedes man, who currently sits P6 in the Drivers’ standings, 42 points behind his team-mate Leclerc.

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Winners: Aston Martin

Easily the biggest surprise of the weekend was the pace of Aston Martin, who just last weekend at Spa were the slowest team on track. 

In Belgium, Alonso and Stroll qualified P19 and P20 respectively, and neither managed to recover their races to score any points. 

At the Hungaroring, however, it was clear even from Free Practice that improvements had been made, despite Alonso having to miss FP1 due to a minor back injury.

On Saturday, after Alonso had returned to the cockpit, a remarkable qualifying performance saw him finish P5, with team-mate Stroll just 0.017s behind in P6 - the pair were not even a tenth and a half off pole position. 

While Stroll did lose his P6 place to Bortoleto in the race, Alonso impressively held onto P5 to achieve his fifth points-score in six races. 

“Definitely very happy, P5 the best result of the year and the best result as a team, 16 points before the summer break it feels good," Alonso said in post-race interviews.

“It was one of those weekends that everything feels right since Free Practice. A good quali yesterday, good race, good execution, good tyre management. Nothing more we could ask.

“Definitely more optimistic for the second part of the year. We really needed this result.”

Alonso and Aston do have every reason to be optimistic.

The 16 points in Hungary have leapfrogged them from P8 to P6 in the Constructors’ standings, 18 points from ‘best of the rest’ Williams in P5. 

Following the summer break, F1 returns to Zandvoort for the ever-colourful Dutch Grand Prix on August 29-31. 

With the race itself set to start on Sunday, August 31 at 2pm UK time, fans can catch all of the action live on Sky Sports F1.

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