Carlos Sainz (P8, 4 pts): 7/10
It feels like every weekend, Ferrari stride into the paddock and declare that they've got on top of their problems and are ready to win again. And every week, a miscellany of issues slowly pick away and unravel that confidence and leave them on the back foot again. Carlos Sainz never looked all that happy at the Hungaroring, finishing P10 and P8 in second and final practice respectively. Even so it was a shock when he missed out on making it through the final round of qualifying by a heartbreaking two thousandths of a second, leaving him starting the race from 11th. Beginning on soft tyres, the disruption triggered by Zhou Guanyu at the start of the race helped him make up five places on the opening lap, slotting him back into sixth behind his team mate Charles Leclerc. He tried to extend the life of his tyres to lap 15 before switching to the hard compound, but that might have been a mistake. At least he had a clean stop, unlike Leclerc. It put the Spaniard ahead once things settled down, with Leclerc on fresher tyres frustrated to be held up; but then, the team had previously declined to ask Leclerc to make way for Sainz in the first stint too. By the end of the race Sainz was suffering from a lack of rear end grip and unable to hold off George Russell in the closing laps, while the dramatically improved pace of the McLaren is also starting to give the Scuderia a distinct sense of an inferiority complex.
Charles Leclerc (P7, 6 pts): 7.5/10
Finishing Friday practice as the fastest man in FP2 was a great start for Charles Leclerc, and Ferrari were sounding confident of a good weekend in Hungary. But it just didn't come together for them. Being outperformed by Alfa Romeo's Zhou Guanyu in qualifying was definitely not in the plan, but Leclerc was still optimistic of moving forward in the race and of tackling the McLarens and contending for a podium. While Zhou took himself out of contention the second the lights went out, that was about the only thing that did go right in the end for Leclerc on Sunday. The McLarens proved to be out of reach, Leclerc's water bottle wasn't working, and then a wheel gun failure at his first pit stop resulted in an interminably long pit stop putting him back out in traffic behind Lance Stroll. While the team tried to strategise their way out of this, communications problems meant that they were only hearing half of what Leclerc was telling them from the cockpit, resulting in confusion. Leclerc found himself on fresher tyres but held up behind his team mate Carlos Sainz for much too long, and it wasn't until lap 44 that the second round of pit stops dealt with the situation. However in stopping again, Leclerc incurred a five second speeding violation that would ultimately cost him sixth place to George Russell in the final classification. Leclerc really couldn't catch a break this week.
