Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur believes Charles Leclerc was “lucky” to finish the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix after a chassis issue thwarted his chance of victory.
The Monegasque finished fourth after having started on pole position, and after pitting on Lap 41 for new tyres, the pace of the Ferrari nosedived.
Instead of catching eventual race-winner Lando Norris on his fresher rubber, Leclerc fell backwards and was taken by both Oscar Piastri and George Russell, who completed the podium.
Leclerc revealed immediately after the race that “an issue coming from the chassis” was the reason behind the drop in pace.
Vasseur revealed that the team will “investigate” if part of the chassis had indeed broken, but was concerned that Leclerc would even make the chequered flag.
“Well, I must say that the situation was quite strange,” he told media including Motorsport Week, “that we were under control the first 40 laps of the race, that we were very in control the first stint, a bit more difficult the second one, but it was still manageable.
“And the last stint was a disaster, very difficult to drive, that the balance was not there and, honestly, we don’t know exactly what’s happened so far.
“It means that we have to investigate if we have something broken on the chassis side or whatever, but at one stage I thought that we will never finish the race, that we can be lucky in this situation to score points of a P4.
“But yeah, it’s very frustrating for us because I think we did the first pole position of the season.
“The first two stints went pretty well and we lost completely the pace and the pace of the weekend on the last run, but yeah, it’s tough.”
Leclerc might have won had Ferrari gremlin not happened
Vasseur hinted that he felt Leclerc was in strong contention for victory had the issue with the car not crept in, despite McLaren’s strength in race trim.
The Frenchman said he suspected that McLaren’s change in strategy was a direct response that would not have been successful in different circumstances.
“I’m not the strategist of McLaren, but I had the feeling on the pit wall that [Lando] Norris took this strategy by default because he was four, five seconds behind Piastri, I think at this stage, and Piastri was trying to attack Charles, he tried to do the undercut,” he explained.
“It didn’t work and for them it was a good attitude to not put the car in the same basket and to try something different at the end I think it was probably the same pace over the 70 laps, it’s always better to have two cars than one but in this case the issue is not there the issue is on our side to try to understand why we lost the part of the race.”
READ MORE – Lando Norris resists Oscar Piastri to head McLaren 1-2 in F1 Hungarian GP
