Lando Norris clinched a gutsy victory over Oscar Piastri to slash his championship deficit down to nine points ahead of the midseason break.
Norris had looked down and out early in the race after dropping from third to fifth in the first two corners after bailing out of a speculative move on Piastri and being passed by George Russell and Fernando Alonso.
It took the Briton two laps to pass Alonso in the slower Aston Martin, but Russell in the Mercedes was fast enough to keep him at bay for the entire opening stint, separating him from leader Charles Leclerc and Piastri in the lead.
Norris was prompted by McLaren to consider switching to a one-stop strategy, and the Briton agreed, with nothing to lose. Leclerc and Piastri stopped on laps 19 and 18 respectively, but Norris stayed out until lap 31 before making his sole tire change.
His pace initially seemed poor, but by lap 34 he began reeling off fastest laps, devouring the 19s gap to the leaders.
The realization dawned on Leclerc and Piastri that their battle for victory was no longer exclusive.
For Piastri it was more serious, with Norris in a position to score heavily against his championship lead.
Leclerc stopped on lap 40, giving him nine-lap-fresher tires compared to Norris, but it was to no advantage. The Monegasque was unable to make any impression on the gap, and he railed against his team for undisclosed issues that he lamented he wasn’t consulted on before the race.
Piastri delayed his stop until lap 45, giving him a 14-lap tire advantage over his teammate.
He rejoined the race 5.2s behind Leclerc and 12.2s off the lead. It took him only six laps to catch and easily pass the Ferrari with a late-braking move around the outside of the scarlet car at the first turn, putting him directly behind his teammate.
With 19 laps to go, his deficit stood at 8.3s, and Piastri sliced it meticulously down to less than 1s with five laps to go.
Once through lapped traffic, it left the Australian with three clean laps to attack his teammate.
With better launches out of the final corner, twice he lunged into the first turn, but on the penultimate lap he overexerted himself, locking up and coming perilously close to a collision.
“Remember how we go racing,” he was reminded by his engineer ahead of the final lap.
The lock-up cost Piastri only fractionally, but it was enough. He was slightly too far back to attempt another late lunge on the final lap, and with no more passing chances around the narrow Hungaroring, his attack was spent.