Vasseur: Crash will have no impact on Leclerc's pace in qualifying

Leclerc shunted out of the second free practice on Friday at Hungaroring when his Ferrari got out pof shape exiting Turn 4, sent it into a tailspin and slammed the barrier with the rear-end as the car slid into the Turn 5 run-off lane with less damage than expected.

Reflecting on Leclerc's incident, Vasseur told Italian reporters in Hungary on Friday evening: "Charles knows he made a small mistake. He was going very fast, from the beginning of the session, the he went too fast. I think that by FP3 he will reset everything. The crash will have no impact on his pace in qualifying."

Apart from the expense of the damage in this budget-cap era, it denied the Italian team a planned test of their upgrades and tweaks to the SF-24. Vasseur explained: "The main problem is that we did not do a race pace simulation with the Medium tyre.

"The last few races have been difficult not only for Charles but for the whole team. Honestly, there have been some technical problems that are no secret, probably he expected something more and sometimes he overdid it in pushing.

"We have to react as a team, it's useless to point the finger at someone or something. When you win you win together and when you don't do your best we have to react as a group, all together," added the Frenchman, in his second season as Ferrari F1 boss.

After Carlos Sainz's victory in Melbourne and Leclerc's famous home win in Monaco, Ferrari's performance dipped relative to the 2024 F1 benchmark Red Bull's Max Verstappen and the resurgent McLaren and Mercedes teams, also with wins on record this season.

Much is expected of the latest upgrades to the Red cars, but Vasseur points to the finest margins ever in F1 between the leading three or four teams: "Problems have always occurred in the past, the big difference is that now development has a slightly different path.

"Every time you bring something the advantages are much smaller, so if there is a small problem it causes much more damage than the advantage it brings. In the past when you brought updates, even if you struggled more with the set-ups, the advantage was still felt.

"It is a problem for everyone, every time you bring something new you also have to optimise the set-up and sometimes there are negative consequences," reckoned Vasseur.

Red Bull have also tinkered with the RB20 which Verstappen sampled. Although quick out of the box early on, he ended the day P2 and not much better than Sergio Perez in the less updated version of the car. Suggesting Max is sandbagging, or Adrian Newey and his design boffins got it wrong. Qualifying will reveal if they found pace or not.

Vasseur said of the World Champions: "I didn’t focus on Red Bull but with the new regulations and the fact that there are no tests it is very difficult to bring updates. You have to sacrifice a session, like we did in Silverstone, to understand and develop the car and try the new parts. I think they did what we did last week.

But there is reason for optimism for Ferrari said Vasseur: "The pace on the flying lap was good in FP1, while in the afternoon in the long runs we had more difficulties, also because we only had one car and we couldn’t make comparisons."

"We also need to understand how much to push in the first two laps of the stint, so it’s difficult to draw conclusions. At least on the flying lap, we’re doing well. We’ve made a clear step forward compared to last week and compared to Austria, but you can never say that it’s fixed for the rest of the season, we need to keep our attention on the bouncing problem," added the Ferrari boss.

Saturday means FP3 and Qualifying, the latter important at Hungaroring. Ahead of which Vasseur ventured: "We hope to have a good free practice. The temperature could be similar and that could be a problem for the race because with this heat there will be more degradation than usual.

"We should not just focus on qualifying, because we can also do something in the race," added Vasseur.

Typically humble, Leclerc took the blame “What happened is that I ran a bit wide on the kerb, I got a snap in the middle of Turn 4, got a bit wide on the kerb and then lost the car on the kerb. So it was my mistake, but now it’s all about bouncing back.

“Until now the car was pretty good, and the feeling is getting a little bit better. We had more of a consistent day compared to the last three or four weekends, so that’s positive. Unfortunately, the mistake means mileage was cut short, but hopefully, we’ll recover in FP3," promised Leclerc.

Ferrari have won the Hungarian Grand Prix seven times out of 38 participations, their last victory in Budapest was with Sebastian Vettel in 2017. Hungaroring has not been a happy hunting ground for Leclerc whose best result is P4 in six starts. In nine starts here, Sainz has one podium scored for the Reds in 2021.