Fred Vasseur owns up to Ferrari’s “very poor” execution in Hungarian GP

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has owned up to the Scuderia’s “very poor” execution in a Hungarian Grand Prix where it made “too many mistakes” and “everything went wrong”.

Ferrari was hoping for a third race victory in 2026 after topping Friday practice and taking second and third on the grid at the Hungaroring, with pole position eluding Lewis Hamilton by a mere 0.012s to McLaren’s Lando Norris. Yet, the seven-time world champion ended up fifth on Sunday, behind team-mate Charles Leclerc, as Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli made up the podium alongside winner Norris.

“It’s not a good Sunday, because when you are 1-2 on Friday, you expect much more than before P4-P5,” Vasseur matter-of-factly stated.

“On top [of that], we made too many mistakes today, starting with the start, with the penalty, with the fact that Max 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, and then you spend your life behind the guys. Everything went wrong, but for sure we have to do a much better job at Sunday.”

Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Vasseur was referring to the Ferrari drivers being the only frontrunners on soft tyres for the first stint, which should have provided a competitive gain at lights out. Yet, Leclerc dropped from second to fifth, while Hamilton – who started down in fifth following his grid penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri in qualifying – only gained one position, at his team-mate’s expense.

Suboptimally-timed tyre changes typically dropped the Ferraris right behind Red Bull-owned cars. Hamilton and Leclerc emerged from their first pitstops behind Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson respectively, then both found themselves following Isack Hadjar after their second trip through the pitlane.

Pitting Hamilton under the late virtual safety car was a risky bet, as shown by his inability to subsequently overtake Antonelli, and that gamble backfired even more when he copped a five-second penalty for speeding in the pitlane. In other words, Ferrari just failed to maximise its car’s clear potential.

“The pure pace of the team was probably better this weekend than Spa or Silverstone,” Vasseur believed.

“We were in front in FP1, we were in FP2, we were able to fight for the pole with Lewis. We lost the pole for 0.01 seconds. And I think today the execution was very poor. But… if we have a good start, starting from the first row, the race is completely different. It’s more the execution today than the pace.”

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

As for Hamilton’s sequence of setbacks throughout this race, which included being overtaken by Verstappen and that pitlane speeding penalty, Vasseur believed it was mostly a case of pushing too much to make up for lost time. 

“Today it’s probably a succession of mistakes,” the Frenchman commented, “that he locked the wheel in the pitstop, that we lost a couple of tenths during the pitstop, and then he probably was trying to be optimum on the pitlane release, and he was a bit too early than the optimum.

“I think when you start to do a mistake, it’s quite easy to do more than one, and this weekend is a good example that when we are trying to push during the pitstop and so, we are losing something. At the pit exit, we were two tenths of a second behind someone, and it’s a succession of fact. The pace was decent, but we were completely unable to overtake Max at the beginning, then Piastri.”

“Point taken for the rest of the season.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team