Winners and Losers from 2024 F1 Hungarian Grand Prix

"Events, dear boy, events."

That was the answer given by former British prime minister Harold MacMillan when asked what the greatest challenges were that he faced.

And it was events that kicked the Hungarian Grand Prix from a relative snoozefest into one of the most controversial races for a long time as McLaren faced a potential mutiny, a subdued maiden win as Red Bull's world champion had a bit of a meltdown. 

Let's get into it.

Winner - Oscar Piastri

Oscar Piastri is good, very good. 

Throughout his rookie season in 2023, managing tyres through a stint was perhaps the one major weakness for a driver as quick, if not quicker than Lando Norris through high-speed sections of track. 

This win has been building and has been coming for him - and he could have conceivably won in Austria without the track limits penalty in qualifying, and at Silverstone if McLaren had double-stacked him with Norris. 

So the Australian has been putting himself in the right places at the right times, and eventually the cards fell his way. 

He was fantastic in the opening two stints to gap Norris and pull away before the late hullaballoo  but he kept his cool and didn't go ranting down the radio about Norris. 

The first win of many.

Winner AND Loser - McLaren

The rarest of things - both a winner and a loser.

First up, it is clear that now the MCL38 is the fastest car on the grid, and even better for McLaren, it is on a variety of tracks with different corner types. It stuck its cars one-two on the grid, and despite taking a few detours along the way, got them back 70 laps later in a one-two, although Norris would argue it was a two-one. 

That is good for McLaren as it can now launch an attack on a floundering Red Bull, whom is now just 61 points ahead in the Constructors'. A first title since 1998 is a real possibility.

Then we get to the loser bit. 

McLaren simply must be stronger, clearer and more direct with their drivers. Norris was first told to let Piastri through at "your earliest convenience."

This is not play-time, it is for a grand prix win, so if you want one driver to move out of the way for the other, tell him straight, cut the dancing around and pulling on his heart-strings and get on with it. 

Loser (of sorts) - Lando Norris

Norris was put into an impossible situation by McLaren when it opted to stop Norris before Piastri at the final round of stops. 

It arguably did not need to do so, and created the mess where it was depending on Norris doing the right thing to let Piastri win his deserved first race.

Norris knows there is a title on the line here, and wants every point he can get, especially when Max Verstappen only took 10 for fifth. 

Eventually he played the team game through the grittiest of gritted teeth, but the main reason he is a loser here is that once again, he fluffed a pole position. 

From his five starts in F1 from P1, including sprints, another driver has led the opening lap all five times now. 

If you want to win championships, that must change.

Winner - Lewis Hamilton

If we're being picky, about the only thing Lewis Hamilton didn't do across the Hungarian GP weekend was take fourth on the grid.

Carlos Sainz beat him by 0.158s to P4 with the Mercedes the slightly faster car over the weekend, so this is a mark against him. 

But, in the race, Hamilton made a typically feisty start, and threatened to hang it around the outside of Turn 2 on lap 1 before falling into a battle with Verstappen and Leclerc for the final spot on the podium. 

He did a defensive masterclass on Verstappen in the middle stint to hold him up and then let a frustrated and boiling Verstappen take himself out of podium contention.

A 200th podium visit for Hamilton in F1 was a job very well done.

Loser - Red Bull and Max Verstappen

When Red Bull and Verstappen have messy weekends such as this, it only serves to remind the level of excellence they achieved in 2023 to make things look so easy. 

First up, Verstappen was frustrated about the Turn 1 incident where he was forced off, but what he could not know is that Norris could not move further right as Piastri was busy going up the inside.

It set in stone a messy day for Red Bull and Verstappen who grew increasingly frustrated at Red Bull's strategy calls put on what he called, amongst his fruity language a "rescue job."

This led to the Hamilton collision for which Verstappen was extremely lucky to avoid a further penalty by the stewards. 

This is a team in need of the summer break to come, to refresh, regroup and put everything into defeating the McLaren charge that is coming after the break.

Winner (of sorts) - Sergio Perez

Now, if you'd have mentioned Sergio Perez as a potential winner when he stacked it in Q1 for a fourth such exit in five races, it would take some justification. 

But this was a quiet, solid, dependable race from Perez who beat his main rival, George Russell in the Mercedes, and given all the traffic he had to fight through, to end only 18.4 seconds behind the Verstappen calamity show, was a very good job.

It is not something Perez will write home about, but the pressure was arguably lifted by Verstappen's meltdown, allowing most of the attention to be deflected away and allow him to have a confidence-boosting race.

It's given him something to work with for Belgium, it is not much, but it is a start. Can he take it?

Loser - Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo was feeling upbeat and ready to go on the hunt after qualifying ninth, and believing seventh-place Fernando Alonso was a target.

But his race fell apart because of RB's decision to pit early which left him mired in the DRS train and the ability to go nowhere.

He didn't receive an apology post-race which annoyed him on a weekend good points were up for grabs and instead Yuki Tsunoda picked up a couple for P9. 

Them's the breaks.