Piastri picked Norris’s pocket launching form the line, holding the inside line even as his teammate pegged him alongside the grass. The tenacity paid off, giving the Australian the lead when both hit the brakes, after which he gently guided the sister car off the road.
From there Piastri had no trouble controlling the race, the benefit of the clear air of the lead helping him to easily manage his tyres on a sweltering afternoon in Budapest.
But a single mistake just before half distance brought Norris back into play. Piastri suffered a snap through turn 11 and ran off the road, dirtying his tyres and more than halving the 4.5-second lead he had established over the sister car.
It was enough for Norris to line up a pass, but it brought him into undercut range of the lead car.
It presented McLaren with a problem on lap 40, when Lewis Hamilton, running third, came in for his final tyre change.
The benefit of fresh tyres was huge in the warm conditions, and McLaren, desperate not to jeopardise just its second one-two finish in a decade, was super conservative in its response, pitting the more vulnerable Norris first to cover the more vulnerable driver give laps later.
It was needlessly conservative, with Norris rejoining with more than five seconds in hand over the Mercedes, but the early stop had the side effect of getting the Briton ahead of Piastri, who stopped two laps later.
McLaren had figured that it could easily order Norris to cede the lead to the sister car, correcting the order after team strategy had incidentally reversed positions.
Norris, however, had other ideas.
“We want to let Oscar through,” his engineer, Will Jospeh, told him.
“You should have boxed him first then, surely,” Norris replied.
“Doesn’t matter,” Joseph said.
“It does for me,” Norris countered.
The tone became more pleading as the laps counted down and Norris continued upping his pace to gap his teammate, who continued managing his rubber per the original team instruction.
“I know you’ll do the right thing,” Joseph implored his driver. “We did this stop sequence for the good of the team.”
Norris argued that his championship fight should have priority, to which Joseph argued: “The way to win a championship is not by yourself. You’re going to need Oscar and you’re going to need the team.”
It took until the third-last lap for the coaching to get through to Norris, the Briton dramatically lifting off on the front straight to wave his teammate through.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Norris said, accepting second place.
Piastri’s way was finally clear to claim his long-awaited first grand prix victory in just his 35th start.
“Very, very special,” he said. “An incredible moment that I’ve been dreaming of for a very long time.
“I said my first dream in my career was reaching F1. The second one is winning a race.
“I’m very, very happy and proud, and not just of myself but of everybody that’s helped me get to this position.”
The Australian - the fifth from his nation to win a Formula 1 grand prix - said he was always confident Norris was going to let him through.
“We’d spoken about it at the timing of the stop that we would sort it back out,” he said. “I had full trust in everyone in the team, including Lando, that we would make that happen.”
Norris initially refused to be drawn on his tactics, arguing that he always intended to follow the team’s instructions despite his apparent recalcitrance, but he later admitted to having conflicted thoughts about serving his own interests of McLaren’s wishes.
“You’ve got to be selfish in this sport at times,” he said. “You’ve got to think of yourself. That’s priority number one.
“I’m also a team player, so my mind was going pretty crazy at the time. It was not easy, but I also understood the situation I was in, and I was quite confident always by the last lap I would have done it.”
Hamilton finished third after a heated battle with Max Verstappen, who was enraged to find his Red Bull Racing was even less competitive in the race than he’d expected.
Upgrades to the RB20 did nothing to close the gap to McLaren during a race, and throughout the race he railed against the car’s balance and his team’s strategy, which dropped him behind Hamilton at his first service and down to fifth behind Charles Leclerc at his second stop.
The climax of his race came on lap 63 of 70, when Verstappen attempted a dive down Hamilton’s inside at the first turn.
The Dutchman locked up and ran straight into the run-off zone, clipping Hamilton on the way and launching his own car high into the air.
Verstappen rejoined with minor damage in fifth, while Hamilton continued to finish third for his podium double century.
“I think it was a tough race today, and I definitely didn’t think I would be having 200 podiums, but what have I done? Like 340 something races?” he said. “So not too bad a score!
“I couldn’t have done it without all those great people that I’ve worked with in both these teams [McLaren and Mercedes].”
Leclerc finished fourth ahead of the crashed-out Verstappen and Carlos Sainz in the second Ferrari.
Sergio Pérez recovered from his crashed-out 16th in qualifying to score six points for seventh ahead of George Russell who followed him nine places up the grid to the flag.
Yuki Tsunoda executed a perfect one-stop strategy to score two points for RB in ninth ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll in 10th.