Vasseur defends Ferrari strategy despite error-strewn Hungarian GP

Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur has defended the strategy employed at the Hungarian Grand Prix despite conceding the Scuderia made "too many mistakes".

Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished seventh and eighth after a testing weekend at the Hungaroring.

Spaniard Sainz shot up the grid from 11th on the opening lap, making the most of starting on the Soft tyres.

But that would be all the progress he would make, eventually losing out to Mercedes' George Russell later in the race, whilst Leclerc endured a miserable afternoon.

The Monégasque finished sixth on the road but was demoted behind Russell by virtue of a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane at his second pit stop.

This compounded a 9.4-second stop at his first change of tyres to leave him some 20 seconds down on his minimum race time.

“I think that first, we will need time to understand what we did right and wrong,” Vasseur told media including RacingNews365.

“The format was different and it’s not so easy to analyse the perfect weekend and you need to get all the results to be able to do a retro-engineering on this.

“But on our side it’s much more the fact that we made too many mistakes from the beginning to the end. It’s not just about the pit stop or the pit entry or the quali or the management of the tyres.

“The potential was probably better than what we showed [on Saturday]. At least with Charles, we lost 20 seconds in the race.”

Best way to protect the result

Ferrari's treatment of Sainz during the race led to criticism on social media, with the Spaniard not offered a free pass by Leclerc despite the softer compound of tyres in the first stint.

Having overtaken his teammate after Leclerc's slow stop, Sainz was pitted second out of the two at the next round of pit stops, forfeiting track position.

“It was the best way for us to protect the result of the team,” explained Vasseur.

“At the end of the race, if you have a look, I think that the potential of Charles, considering the fact that Carlos has to start with soft and how we were with the life that Charles would have finished probably 20 seconds ahead of Carlos, it means that it was a good choice."

On whether Leclerc's issues would have changed the strategy, Vasseur insisted: “Nobody can predict before the call that you will get the penalty, you will have the issue with the wheel gun and so on.

“It’s always easy to redo the race after the chequered flag and to say it would have been different. But I think at this stage it was the right call and I’m still convinced.”