A slap in the face for Ferrari: Vasseur admits – Hamilton/Leclerc podium spot squandered

Did Ferrari make too many mistakes at the Hungaroring to secure a podium finish? Hamilton was warned too late in qualifying, resulting in a penalty for Lewis, whilst strategically questionable decisions were made during the Grand Prix.

Ferrari faces a barrage of criticism following this entertaining Hungarian Grand Prix. It began in qualifying, when superstar Lewis Hamilton was warned too late that Oscar Piastri was closing in fast in his McLaren. The helpless Hamilton consequently got in the Australian’s way, resulting in a three-place grid penalty instead of second on the grid.

The two Ferraris were then – as the only cars from the top teams – sent out onto the track for the Hungarian Grand Prix on soft tyres; Ferrari did not swap positions even though Leclerc was the faster driver, and the timing of the pit stops raises questions. Added to this was another penalty for Hamilton (driving too fast in the pit lane – was the speed limiter set correctly?) and the misjudgement of bringing both cars into the pits for fresh tyres during a VSC phase.

Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli said ‘thank you’ and moved up to second and third place. When we consider just how strong Ferrari were in qualifying (Hamilton second fastest, Leclerc third fastest), there remains a nagging feeling that the Italians squandered their chance of podium finishes here.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur comments: “That’s not a good result when you have the fastest car on the track on Friday and only just miss out on pole. Fourth and fifth places are the result of a race that was too chaotic for us. Charles got off to a bad start, and then there was the penalty for Lewis. The pit stop during the VSC phase wasn’t exactly brilliant, and our pace was a bit of a mystery at times.”

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“That applies to us, but to the others as well: in any case, it’s hard to explain why Max managed to do 37 laps on the soft tyres. We need to minimise mistakes if we want to achieve better race results, and we didn’t manage that today.”

“We didn’t take the Red Bull Racing strategy into account because we pitted slightly earlier than Max, and it seemed ambitious to me to try to go all the way to the end of the race without taking the normal lifespan of the soft tyres into account.”

“The reality is different: we didn’t have the opportunity during free practice to complete endurance runs with the three available compounds, so we opted for a particular approach. That didn’t turn out to be the right one.”

“I think our strategy of letting Leclerc and Hamilton start on the soft tyres was a good one, but the correct approach with the tyre compounds would probably have been – soft, soft and then hard. We didn’t do that.”

“We’d expected a one-two finish; we had both cars at the front, but not on the right day. We made too many mistakes and took a lot of wrong decisions. We were the only ones who lost positions on the track; everything went the wrong way: on this circuit, there’s only one place to overtake. Everyone uses their KERS there, and if you’re a bit slower on the straight, you can’t overtake.”

“The pace was decent because we were much faster than Max and Piastri, but in the end we didn’t have a proper opportunity to overtake.”

“Charles had the pace in the first part of the race to keep up with the McLaren, but when you’re fifth and lose your position to Max, who was struggling in the first part of the race, you simply lose ground, and everything becomes even more difficult.”

“One of the crucial factors with these cars is having a clear run – in other words, not driving in slipstream. We saw that with Lando: when he was in the lead, he was much faster than everyone else; before that, he’d struggled behind Piastri.”

“If you make a mistake, you inevitably find yourself in the opposite situation, so that everything goes wrong right from the start. We lost pole position by a hundredth of a second; a small mistake cost us dearly, and we lost position after position. In Formula 1, you always have to be perfect to be at the front.”

“It wasn’t a disaster for the Constructors’ Championship today, because we scored more points than Mercedes and McLaren. But I’m well aware that we could have achieved much more at this Hungarian Grand Prix, and that’s a real shame.”