McLaren Formula 1 junior Nyck de Vries stormed to victory in a thrilling Formula 2 race at the Hungaroring, beating Lando Norris despite the Briton’s dominance early-on.
With the race starting in wet conditions, Norris carved his way through the field climbing from sixth place to first in 10 laps. He was 2.5 seconds per lap faster than his rivals.
De Vries had run in second before being passed by Norris and emerged from his pitstop for slick tyres 14 seconds behind the race leader after jumping polesitter Sergio Sette Camara in the pitlane.
He caught Norris at a rate of over one second per lap. With eight laps remaining of the 34-lap feature, de Vries performed a cut-back move on Norris at the tight Turns 6 and 7 chicane to take the lead.
Norris was struggling with heavy degradation on his medium tyres and was unable to fight back.
Norris finished in second place. Camara crossed the line in third before being handed a 10-second time penalty for causing a last lap collision, dropping him to seventh place and promoting Antonio Fuoco onto the podium.
Sette Camara and Charouz Racing System’s Fuoco managed to close in on Norris to challenge for second place in the final laps.
After a failed attempt to pass Norris at the hairpin Turn 1, Camara lost third to Fuoco. At the penultimate corner on the final lap of the race, Fuoco challenged Norris on the outside line, while Camara dived to the inside of the Charouz-prepared car. The two made contact, as Camara pitched Fuoco into a spin.
Finishing in second, Norris has reduced George Russell’s championship lead to 19 points after starting the race 37 points adrift. Russell sacrificed fourth place on the grid after a clutch issue meant that he had to start from the pitlane.
After stalling and losing over a minute at the start, a throttle problem later forced him to retire from the race.
His ART Grand Prix team-mate Jack Aitken ended up in fourth place after an intense battle with DAMS’s Alexander Albon in the second half of the race.
While Aitken suffered a poor start from second, Albon carved through the field in the wet conditions. He attempted to pass Aitken on the inside at Turn 1 in the closing stages, but locking his brakes on the wet line, Albon took to the run-off area and had to defend against Roberto Merhi and Luca Ghiotto.
Merhi later slipped out of contention for the points finishing an eventual 11th. Following Albon’s successful defence, Ghiotto ended up finishing sixth.
Artem Markelov secured reverse grid pole in eighth place, narrowly beating his team-mate Tadasuke Makino, who climbed from the back of the grid to finish ninth.
Nirei Fukuzumi had run as high as seventh for much of the race, before falling backwards in the closing stages and holding on to a point in 10th.
