Vasseur owns up: ‘Too many mistakes’ cost Ferrari podium chance

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur pulled no punches after the Hungarian Grand Prix, admitting the Scuderia threw away what should have been a much stronger result through a catalogue of self-inflicted errors.

After topping both Friday practice sessions and emerging as McLaren's closest challenger throughout the weekend, Ferrari looked well placed to fight for a podium – and perhaps even more.

Instead, the team came away with fourth and fifth places after a race riddled with costly mistakes, strategic setbacks and operational failures.

While Ferrari still edged Constructors' Championship rival Mercedes by a single point, Vasseur made it clear that offered little consolation after a Sunday that fell well below expectations.

Ferrari's execution comes under fire

Vasseur suggested Ferrari's outright pace had been strong enough to contend near the front, but admitted the team's race execution completely undermined its performance.

"It's difficult to clearly understand the pace," he said, noting that the race could have unfolded very differently had Charles Leclerc retained second place between the two McLarens at the start.

Instead, Ferrari quickly found itself on the back foot.

"It's not a good Sunday, because when you are 1-2 on Friday you expect much more than P4-P5," he added.

"And on top of that we made too many mistakes, starting with the start, with the [pitlane speeding] penalty, with the fact that Max [Verstappen] overtook us on track, that each time that we were doing a pitstop we are losing a position for 0.2 or 0.3 seconds.

"Everything went wrong, but for sure we have to do a much better job on Sunday.

"I think the pace was better, the pure pace; the pure pace of the team was probably better this weekend than Spa or Silverstone. We were in front in FP1, in FP2, we were able to fight for pole with Lewis.

“I think the execution was very poor. It's more the execution."

Hamilton's afternoon summed up Ferrari's frustrations. A slow final pit stop allowed Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli to jump ahead, before a pit lane speeding infringement – triggered by switching off the limiter fractionally too early – added another setback to an already disappointing afternoon.

Leclerc points to inconsistent SF-26

Charles Leclerc also acknowledged Ferrari never managed to unlock consistent performance across the race, describing the SF-26 as unpredictable from stint to stint.

"We weren't particularly stellar at any point of the race," he insisted, quoted by The Race. "The first stint on hards wasn't bad. The last stint on softs was pretty good.

"But then there were too many ups and downs. And I think that's really where we need to work, is try and find that consistency with this car - because it's just been very, very tricky on some stints for Lewis and some other stints with me. And it's just a little bit strange how uncorrelated everything is."

Hamilton's own race also raised questions over Ferrari's late-race strategy. The seven-time world champion later admitted he was surprised to be called into the pits during the Virtual Safety Car, believing remaining on track would have preserved a podium finish.

"I'm not really sure why we stopped at the end," Hamilton said. "I got the call right before the pitlane entry, so I didn't have time to debate it.

"I would never have stopped if it meant that I was giving up track position. So, I thought that that would not be the case.”

Read also:

• Hamilton: Ferrari wrong pit call ‘opened the door to penalty’

Vasseur, however, defended the call, insisting Ferrari had made the decision based on the information available at the time.

"We realised that the soft was not that bad, we used the stint of Max [as reference] and we decided to go for the soft because we had the oldest hard of the field [at that moment],” the Frenchman explained.

"As we had a poor start, we tried to do the undercut, we put the [new] tyres very early [in each stint] - and you have to take decisions before the results. I think if I had to do the same, I would do the same today, try to push with the soft."

Whether the strategy was right or wrong, Vasseur's post-race verdict left little room for ambiguity.

Ferrari's pace may have been good enough to challenge near the front at the Hungaroring, but sloppy execution ensured the Scuderia squandered one of its strongest opportunities of the season.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via X and Facebook