Vasseur: Our result is rather poor

Another race to forget for the Scuderia, with lack of pace, operational errors, driver errors and tyre degradation all marring their Formula 1 weekend in Budapest.

Leclerc qualified sixth for the race in Hungary, while Sainz was only 11th. As start on the Soft tyres meant the Spaniard could make progress on the start of the race, but was later compromised by tyre degradation as he had to pit earlier than others.

Leclerc's race was blighted with errors, as the team ruined one of his pitstops, while he was also found to be speeding in the pitlane, receiving a five-second time penalty, losing sixth place to Mercedes' George Russell.

Leclerc said of his race: "I was quite happy with my pace in the first stint, as we were managing things really well and keeping up with the cars ahead.

"Then we lost time on our first pit stop, which put us on the back foot and I had to push to recover some positions. The penalty we got after the second stop was another thing that made things more difficult, so all in all, it wasn’t a great day.

"I’m looking forward to Spa and hope that we can finish the first half of the season on a high there," he concluded.

Sainz added: "We had a good start, making up five places on the first lap, and a very good first stint with the Softs, managing to stretch the tyre life.

"Unfortunately, with the Hard compound and longer stints to do, we struggled with rear degradation and didn’t have the pace of the front runners, which is our main weakness at the moment.

"We were expecting more at this track and we need to look into our main areas of improvement," Sainz lamented.

Summing up the race, Fred Vasseur did not mince his words, he admitted: "Our result is rather poor today.

"It was a complicated race with Charles, chiefly because he lost around seven seconds at the pit stop, which was a massive delay, because of an issue with a wheel-gun. This also put him in traffic and then there was also the 5-second pit lane speeding penalty.

"With Carlos, we took the risk of starting him on Softs and it was a good move in the early stages, as he made up places. But we knew it would be quite tricky for him as he would have to do a lot of tyre management, switching earlier to the Hard compound. However, starting eleventh and finishing where he did, ahead of Alonso, I’d say was not too bad a result," he explained.

"I have the feeling that we are not that far off the pace in terms of performance," the Frenchman added, "but we did not put everything together over the whole weekend. We showed we had the potential on Friday, but then we did not build on it for Saturday or today in the race.

"Now we really need to focus on Belgium, because it is always important to go into the summer break with a good result, find more pace and minimise mistakes," Vasseur concluded.

Ferrari are currently fourth in the 2023 F1 Constructors' Championship, 17 points behind Aston Martin. Sainz and Leclerc are sixth and seventh in the Drivers' Standings, seven points separating the pair.