Ferrari trio of Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and Frederic Vasseur reckon fourth and sixth was the best they could have done in F1 Hungarian GP.
Amid the dramas that engulfed Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren in F1 Hungarian GP, Ferrari were out of it all in their own. Leclerc had a small look-in when he and the team played out a smart strategy against Max Verstappen, but largely they were out of their mess.
Leclerc made a good start and hung on at the back of Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in the early stages. Even though he didn’t have enough legs to pass them, the Monegasque stay did cause some troubles, especially at the Red Bull camp with the strategy.
In the end, the mistake from Verstappen allowed Leclerc to end up fourth in a race where they didn’t have better pace than the other three teams. The result was better than expected for Leclerc, but not enough still in the overall context.
His teammate Sainz rued his race start where he lost out to Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso. He had to fight back to regain the place which cost him time and he eventually fell behind in the pack and was always playing a catch-up game.
With the likes of Sergio Perez and George Russell not in the game, Sainz was a lonely sixth. Interestingly, Ferrari team boss Vasseur was in a better mood despite the gap. The Frenchman pointed out at the gap that lessened from 2023 event to 2024.
Results –
Leclerc: “It was better than expected. I felt like the pace was quite strong, then a track like Budapest is very difficult to actually overtake. But we were in a good place, the first stint was strong, the second stint was also very strong. Then we had to make a choice for the last stint in order to whether we boxed with Lewis and we took the place to Max or whether we stayed out with Max. We decided to come in, which I think wasn’t a bad choice. But that made our last stint very tricky because I was on used medium and very used medium when Max came back. So it was a tricky race, but the pace was there. So that was good. But that’s not enough to satisfy me. I mean, looking at the overall picture, we are still lacking a lot of pace in qualifying compared to our main competitors. And on tracks like this we pay the price.”
Sainz: “The start cost me pretty much the whole race. First bad start of the season so it’s not like I can be too hard on myself or on the team. We need to analyse whether it was my mistake in the procedure or whether we just had too aggressive clutch settings for the start and we just paid the price with that wheel spin that then get me off the line. So, we’ll have to have a look and analyse. The rest It seemed okay. Honestly, it’s difficult to judge from my side because I was always playing catch-up and especially the first two stints, I had to overtake cars at the beginning of my stints which always compromised the tyre deg, having to go on the marbles and use the tyre at the beginning of the stint to use the peak of the tyre rather than nursing it in and then being fast in the second half of the stint. So yeah, I cannot analyse that too much. The only positive was the first stint. I was quite quick with that medium tyre and then degraded it a bit too much at the end which then allowed me to be fast at the end.”
Vasseur: “Bonus? I don’t know, at the end we had a strong pace all the Sunday. Last year, we finished 65 seconds behind the Red Bull and this weekend we are 20 seconds behind the leader and in front of the Red Bull. The last 12 months we did a decent job. Now it’s not enough and it’s clear that McLaren was faster than us, and they were faster than us by 2 or 3 tenths all the weekend. But looking after where we are coming back and the last two or three events, we did a good recovery and now let’s be focused on the next one, we need to do a step in performance but we are on the right track.”
Pace against Mercedes –
Leclerc: “We expected it to be very close. But I felt like we had a bit of an edge, because on a track where dirty air is so important, it’s so detrimental for the car behind. I felt like I
could follow quite nicely. So I think we had a strong car today. I don’t think we could have done much more considering our starting position. So we did.”
Race performance overall, Leclerc’s stints –
Vasseur: “It’s difficult to say. It’s coming from the global set-up of the car, fitting mode with the long stint or the temperature. But it’s true that we are in a better shape today, that we fought all the race with the Mercedes and the Red Bull, and it was better than in the quali. I don’t want to sell it until next week because I’m not sure that next week we’ll have very hot temperatures. As for Charles, we were expecting to do a longer one but when we got, I’m not sure, it was Max?
“We were stuck behind him and at one stage that we have to take a decision if you stay on track and you have the same tyres on the same edge of the tyres then the guy in front of you can’t take it means that you have to take some aggressive option either to stay on track as we did on the first hint and you extend and then you have a tyre advantage because you have 10 laps less and if the deck is a half a tenth per lap if you have 10 laps you take that second advantage or you try to do the undercut. We did it, but Hamilton pitted the same lap as us and we were a bit stuck behind him at the beginning of the stint. When you have two cars in front of you, that’s really difficult.”
Here’s how F1 Hungarian GP panned out
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