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Though not suffering quite as much self-doubt as Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris admits he still has work to do.
The Briton heads into the summer break nine points adrift of his teammate, however he is aware that this could have just as easily been a 23 point deficit.
Other than mistakes during qualifying, though admittedly he wasn’t alone, a fluffed start saw the Briton drop from third to fifth.
Though he was soon able to overhaul Fernando Alonso, it wasn’t until Piastri, Leclerc and Russell made their first stops that Norris found himself in the lead.
He continued to lead, extending his opening phase but the others were closing in.
And that’s when he got the call.
“Lando, 40 laps on the hard tyre, you up for it?” asked his engineer Will Joseph.
“Yeah, why not?” came the reply.
On Lap 31 he pitted, and rejoining in fourth immediately began to set a blistering pace, so much so that there were further mistakes, causing Joseph to warn: “Just keep the focus, we don’t want these mistakes.”
Re-inheriting the lead when his teammate finally pitted, Norris knew that in the final stages, when his tyres would be well past their ‘shelf life’ he would be vulnerable.
However, despite Piastri’s best efforts, which almost saw the Australian T-bone him when he locked-up making a move in Turn 1, Norris held on.
“I’m dead. I’m dead,” he said in the parc ferme interview. “It was tough.
“We weren’t really planning on the one-stop,” he continued, “but after the first lap it was kind of our only option to get back into things.
“The final stint with Oscar catching, I was pushing flat-out,” he admitted. “It’s rewarding even more because of that. The perfect result today.
“I didn’t think it would get us the win, I thought it would get us maybe into second. I knew if I had clean air and could push I could maybe make things work and that’s what we did.
“It always is a bit of a gamble these kind of things. It also requires no mistakes, good laps, good strategy and that’s what we had today.
“We’re so tightly fought it’s hard to say if momentum is on anyone’s side. It’s tough but fun racing against Oscar. Credit to Oscar, he put up a good charge, and I just about held on.
“It has been a tough battle so far with Oscar,” he said, “and it is going to continue to be tough. The margins between us are pretty small.
“There are things I can do better and improve on, and I am sure he will probably say the same thing. So, it is going to be a good and tough fight, probably until the end.
“Even though the results have looked great, I’m not making my life very easy at the minute. If I can work on those things, then I’ll be in a better place.”
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Hungaroring here.
