Does McLaren’s explanation for its F1 team orders controversy stack up?

McLaren may have delivered a dominant 1-2 at Formula 1’s Hungarian Grand Prix, but it did not come without controversy thanks to the late team orders controversy.

A decision to pit Lando Norris first at the final round of stops handed the Briton the undercut and the lead against Oscar Piastri, and meant that when his team-mate pitted two laps later, the Australian came out behind.

What played out after that was a fascinating toing and froing between the pitwall and Norris after a request for him to reverse the race positions initially fell on deaf ears.

While Norris did eventually pull over with two laps to go, it was not lost on anyone that McLaren had made what should have been a wonderful afternoon a bit more complicated than necessary.

As Norris said afterwards: “I feel like we made things way too hard for ourselves and way too tricky for ourselves.

“We should have just boxed Oscar first and things would have been simple, but they gave me the lead and I gave it back.”

Piastri added: “I’m sure it’s something we’ll discuss as a team. You know, the information I had at the time was Lando was boxing early to cover Lewis [Hamilton], and I was going long to cover Max [Verstappen], essentially, because I knew that he’d stop later, and I think we were just being very safe.

“Of course, that naturally gave Lando an undercut and maybe made things a little bit more complicated than it needed to be. But yeah, I’m sure that’s something we’ll go through.”

Piastri’s reference to the influence of the other cars was explained by McLaren boss Andrea Stella as the trigger for what happened – and that there was no fear from senior management of briefly having the cars in the wrong order if that helped guarantee the 1-2.

The team orders situation was prompted by the decision to pit Norris first on lap 45, when he was just two seconds behind Piastri after steadily closing in over the second stint.

McLaren had been mindful about the advantage that third-placed Hamilton had with fresh tyres, after he had stopped on lap 40.

Having initially come out 29.36 seconds behind Norris on his first flying lap, Hamilton chipped away to close the gap. Over the next few laps, the gap between him and his fellow British came down. From 27.9 it was reduced to 26.8, then 25.5 before Norris pitted.

With pitstop loss time behind around 20-seconds,…