Lando Norris took his and McLaren’s first victory of the year in a compelling Hungarian Grand Prix.

As the world champion cruised to a comfortable victory, there was a tense fight for the remaining podium positions in the closing laps between Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.

Verstappen just managed to hold on while Antonelli took third to extend his championship lead to 50 points over Lewis Hamilton and 59 over his Mercedes team-mate George Russell, who finished seventh after a bad start.

Ferrari’s Hamilton finished the grand prix on Antonelli’s tail in fourth place but was penalised five seconds for speeding in the pit lane and dropped to fifth behind his team-mate Charles Leclerc.

Norris’ team-mate Oscar Piastri led for most of the first half of the race but retired from second place with a gearbox failure.

The key stories of the race were:

Norris’ concern before the start would have been about the losing a place to Leclerc, who was starting second behind the Briton.

The McLaren driver made a good start, the challenge from Leclerc never materialised, but instead Norris lost the lead to Piastri.

Norris was leading through Turn Two, but a strong start put the Australian second, and when Norris made an error and ran wide through Turn Two, Piastri seized his opportunity to take the lead.

That left McLaren with a quandary for although their cars were running one-two, the slower one was in the lead, and they were concerned about threats from behind.

Piastri led through the first pit stops, with Norris never much more than a second behind, but Norris started to challenge hard in the second stint and wanted to be given the opportunity to challenge his team-mate.

Norris asked to make his second stop first but was refused.

Instead, Piastri was called in, McLaren saying they were covering the threat from Hamilton, who had just stopped himself, and Norris was allowed to run for six further laps before making his pit call for fresh tyres.

Norris returned to the track just in front of Piastri, who had been delayed by a collision with Williams driver Carlos Sainz while lapping the Spaniard, who was penalised five seconds for the incident.

Piastri was clearly unhappy, telling his engineer not to talk to him shortly after Norris returned to the track.

But Norris’ pace afterwards justified the decision and he pulled away into a comfortable lead.

A late virtual safety car caused by Piastri’s retirement enlivened the battles behind Norris, but he was untouchable as he and McLaren, who came to Hungary with an upgraded car, revived memories of some of their dominant victories of their championship last year.

More to follow