Ferrari rues costly mistakes as ‘everything went wrong’ in Hungary
Fred Vasseur admitted "too many mistakes" were made in Hungary.
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur admitted “everything went wrong” for the team in the Hungarian Grand Prix, with “too many mistakes” hindering the Scuderia.
Having appeared the strongest package in Friday practice, Lewis Hamilton was pipped to pole position by Lando Norris by just 0.012s, before a three-place grid penalty dropped him out of immediate contention, with he and Charles Leclerc both finishing off the podium.
Ferrari team boss reflects on Hungarian Grand Prix mistakes
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A five-second penalty for Hamilton for speeding in the pit lane saw him drop behind his teammate at the chequered flag, with Ferrari taking fourth and fifth place for their efforts on a weekend where the team had expected to succeed.
An early undercut from Hamilton worked in getting past Max Verstappen for third place, though that was quickly undone by a bold move up the inside at Turn 1 as the Red Bull driver lapped Liam Lawson and squeezed past his old title rival in one fell swoop.
Verstappen also seemed to outfox Ferrari, and other teams, in a move to soft tyres for his final stint, which proved a solid race tyre as others struggled for outright pace on hard rubber – with Vasseur having believed the softs would have only lasted half the distance Versatppen managed on them.
Lando Norris took what proved a dominant win for McLaren, his first of the season, and Vasseur felt the lack of clean air available to Ferrari made it difficult to judge the team’s potential.
“It’s difficult to fully understand the pace because I think that clean air is key,” Vasseur explained to PlanetF1.com and others at the Hungaroring.
“It’s not a good Sunday, because when you are 1-2 on Friday, you expect much more than P4 [and] P5, and on top of that, we made too many mistakes, starting from the start, with the penalty, with the fact that Max overtook us on track, that each time that we did a pit stop, we lost a position by 0.2, 0.3 seconds.
“The pure pace of the team was better this weekend than Spa or Silverstone. We were in front in FP1, we were in FP2. We were able to fight for the pole with Lewis, we lost pole by a hundredth of a second and today [Sunday], the execution was very poor.
“If we had a good start, starting from the first row, the race would be completely different, and it’s more the execution today [rather than pace].
“Everything went wrong, but for sure we have to do a much better job on Sunday.”
More on Ferrari and the Hungarian Grand Prix
How Ferrari lost Hungary podium as strategy and mistakes mask promising pace
Hungarian GP conclusions: Norris afterglow, Piastri the nearly man, Newey insult
Asked if Ferrari had race-winning pace within it, Vasseur instead highlighted the speed of Norris at the front of the field as, when he managed to have the lead to himself, he made the most of it.
If Leclerc had been on his tail at the start rather than Oscar Piastri, though, it may have been a different story.
“What is clear is that Lando was very, very quick, much more than Oscar,” he added. “I thought that when we were stuck behind Oscar, we were probably faster than him. Lando, when he was on his own, he was flying.
“But the issue is that with these cars, it’s difficult to know what your pace is when you don’t have clean air.
“I don’t know if we were able to win or not, [Norris] took the pole position first, but I think if you put Charles P2 at Turn 1, it could have been a different race for us.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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