Vasseur blames Ferrari’s "very poor" execution for Hungarian GP disappointment

Ferrari’s promising weekend collapses in Budapest

Fred Vasseur has described Ferrari’s execution at the Hungarian Grand Prix as “very poor” after the team converted a convincing Friday into a disappointing fourth- and fifth-place finish.

Ferrari’s advantage, however, did not carry through to qualifying. Lando Norris, driving the updated MCL40, edged Hamilton by just 12 milliseconds for pole. Hamilton then received a three-place grid penalty, while Oscar Piastri’s strong launch helped McLaren take control of the race from the front.

A catalogue of costly errors

Ferrari’s race unravelled over 70 laps. Hamilton allowed Max Verstappen to recover track position despite completing a successful undercut during the first pit-stop cycle. Further strategic errors compounded the problem, while a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane pushed Hamilton further down the order.

Vasseur said Ferrari lost positions at every pit stop by roughly two or three tenths of a second, adding to the impact of the grid penalty and Verstappen’s on-track pass. The result left Leclerc fourth and Hamilton fifth.

“It’s difficult to fully understand the pace because I think that clean air is key,” Vasseur told media. “It’s not a good Sunday… we made too many mistakes.”

Pace was not the main problem

Vasseur maintained that Ferrari’s underlying speed was stronger than its results at Silverstone and Spa. The team led both Friday practice sessions and missed pole by only a hundredth of a second.

“The pure pace of the team was quite better this weekend than Spa or Silverstone,” he said. “The execution was very poor.”

He stopped short of claiming Ferrari would have won, pointing instead to the difference between Norris’s pace in clean air and Piastri’s performance when Ferrari ran behind him. In Vasseur’s view, Leclerc holding second place through the opening corners could have produced an entirely different race.