Lando Norris reveals sarcastic reaction to first-lap agony

Lando Norris has explained how he responded to dropping to fifth on the opening lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix,

The McLaren driver started from third and enjoyed a strong initial launch, but found his path blocked by team-mate Oscar Piastri on the run down to the first corner.

That left him vulnerable and both George Russell and Fernando Alonso swept around the outside, leaving him fifth by the end of lap 1.

Whilst the British driver was able to dispatch of the Aston Martin quickly, the Mercedes proved trickier to negotiate. However, it set him up to roll the dice with the alternate, and ultimately winning, one-stop strategy.

After prevailing in a nail-biting fight to the finish over Piastri to claim his ninth grand prix victory, slashing his F1 drivers' championship deficit to nine points in the process, Norris relayed his experience of the first lap at the Hungaroring.

When asked what went through his head when he slumped to fifth, the 25-year-old shared his communication over team radio that occurred in response.

"'Brilliant'," he replied to media, including RacingNews365. "That’s actually what I said over the line the first lap.

"Because I did, I watched quite a few videos of lap one to Turn 1. Clearly, it didn’t work."

Expanding on how the opening moments of the race transpired, Norris further detailed how it was more a case of bad luck with how things unfolded on track than a case of making a wrong call off the line.

"My start was good," Norris said. "I think Charles' was pretty good as well. Oscar then came over to the left, and I was kind of just hoping both were going to be on the right.

"I got a bit of a slipstream on Oscar. I had to pull out to the right, but Oscar could stay in the slipstream of Charles, which then gave him a bit more speed again.

"But at that point, it was hard to back out and go to the left because I would have had to brake a bit."

He branded his misfortune the "worst-case scenario" whilst insisting that in the grand scheme, he had little to "complain" about.

"I mean, I'll look back and review it and see what I could have done better," the McLaren driver added. "I feel like I was more just unlucky with how things panned out.

"I think if we were to do it again, most of the time things would turn out better than they did today. So, I think it was just worst-case scenario. But my start was good, and I have nothing to really complain about."