Fred Vasseur laments 'very poor' Ferrari execution: 'We made too many mistakes'

Fred Vasseur has bemoaned Ferrari's "very poor" execution at the Hungarian Grand Prix, insisting his team made "too many mistakes" in Budapest.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc dominated the early part of the weekend at the Hungaroring, each topping a practice session on Friday as the Scuderia ended the day comfortably 1-2.

That was the expected form book heading into the round, with the circuit's twisty, technical layout favouring the Maranello-based squad's superior chassis, with significantly less of an emphasis placed on power unit performance than at the two previous rounds, in Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps.

However, Lando Norris — in the updated MCL40 — got the better of the pair in qualifying, with the McLaren driver just 12 milliseconds quicker than his compatriot in red.

A three-place grid penalty for Hamilton pushed him down the order, and the fast-starting Oscar Piastri allowed the constructors' champions to control the grand prix from the front, at what has been a happy hunting ground for the papaya team in recent years.

From there, the 70-lap race unravelled for the Prancing Horse, with Hamilton leaving the door open for Max Verstappen to regain track position despite just pulling off a successful undercut during the first round of pit stops before strategic missteps further hindered progress.

It left Leclerc and the seven-time F1 drivers' champion to come home a disappointing fourth and fifth, after the latter was shuffled behind from being hit with a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane.

Whilst listing the catalogue of errors, Vasseur also highlighted how challenging it is to establish what the potential of the SF-26 truly was in race trim.

"It's difficult to fully understand the pace because I think that clean air is key," the Ferrari team principal told media, including RacingNews365.

"Firstly, 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."

'Pure pace' better than Spa-Francorchamps and Silverstone

When it was put to the Frenchman that the previous two rounds defied expectations and yet at the Hungaroring, which was supposed to be a Ferrari circuit, the team struggled, Vasseur pointed out that the result was not befitting the underlying pace of the Italian team's car.

The 55-year-old was also quick to stress that the afternoon would have unfolded differently had Leclerc managed to keep hold of second place through the opening few corners.

"It's a bit too early, but I think the pace was better, the pure pace. But not the reason... the pure pace of the team was quite better this weekend than Spa or Silverstone," he explained.

"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 [in the race] 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 than the pace."

However, Vasseur was careful not to state whether the Ferrari would have been strong enough to claim victory, instead choosing to spotlight the diverging performance of Norris and Piastri at McLaren and reiterating how critical clean air would have been.

"What is clear is that Lando was very, very quick, much more than Oscar," he added. "When we were behind Oscar, we were probably faster than him. Lando, when he was on his own, 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.

"But it's true that Lando was very, very strong. I don't know if we were able to win or not; he took the pole position first, but I think if you put Charles P2 at Turn 1, that could have been a different race for us."