McLaren explain critical choice behind Lando Norris-Oscar Piastri difference

McLaren boss Andrea Stella has explained the crucial decision to split Hungarian Grand Prix strategies between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. 

Norris used an unfancied one-stopper to claim victory in Budapest, fending off a late charge from the two-stopping Piastri. 

The Briton had been switched to a one-stop after a bad first lap in which he dropped from third to fifth, and then could not pass George Russell's Mercedes after clearing Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. 

Norris pitted for the only time on Lap 31, leaving him 39 laps to run to complete the one-stopper, with Piastri stopping for the second time on Lap 46, and after clearing Charles Leclerc on Lap 51, had 19 laps to make up 8.9s on Norris.

The Australian fell 0.6s short at the flag, as Norris cut Piastri's championship lead from 16 to nine points heading into the summer break, as team principal Stella explained how a "fair chance" was behind the thinking of committing Piastri to a two-stop.

"Our baseline strategy was a two-stop strategy; we didn't think necessarily that the one-stop was possible," Stella told media, including RacingNews365. 

"So with Oscar, we tried to go on a good, deterministic two-stop strategy, trying to pass Leclerc in the first stop and then extending the second stop to have a tyre delta.

"It was to have those few tenths of a second to be able to pass Leclerc, and it worked.

"When it comes to Lando and the one-stop strategy, when we extended leaving Lando out, we didn't think that the one-stop would have been possible, but credit to Lando, he managed to put together some strong sectors and lap-times with relatively used tyres.

"So we somehow convinced ourselves that the one-stop was starting to get in the game as we progressed with the first stint, but it wasn't like entering the race with the one and two-stop being equivalent. 

"We thought the two-stop strategy would be the dominant strategy.

"We wanted to give Oscar a fair chance on Lando and not deviate too much from an optimal two-stop because that would have been unfair to Oscar in relation to his competition with Lando."