Although a frustrating set of mistakes and penalties may have separated Lewis Hamilton from a podium finish at the 2026 F1 Hungarian GP, Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur saw no cause for concern and defended his driver.
Ferrari attended the 2026 F1 Hungarian GP as the favorite for victory after two lucrative weekends at Silverstone and Spa. With the SF-26’s chassis strength, Ferrari was expected to ace Hungaroring’s tight, twisty layout.
Despite showing winning pace in Friday’s free practice sessions, Ferrari failed to reach the Hungarian F1 podium. While Charles Leclerc finished just outside of the top 3, Lewis Hamilton placed right behind his teammate in P5. The Briton’s weekend was more chaotic than his teammate’s, with penalties mixing up his Hungarian GP.
Penalties that potentially cost the 2026 F1 Hungarian GP podium
Lewis Hamilton’s weekend was first compromised by the three-place grid penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri in Q3, which dropped him from P2 to P5 on Sunday’s starting grid.
During the race, a five-second penalty for exceeding the pit-lane speed limit by just 0.1 km/h further hit Hamilton’s recovery in the race from his penalty-induced starting position. The breach demoted the British driver from fourth to fifth at the chequered flag, right behind his teammate Charles Leclerc.
Hamilton’s penalties cannot be judged the same
The final 5-second penalty marked Hamilton’s fourth in three consecutive rounds, following penalties for causing a collision with George Russell at Spa and executing a false start at Silverstone.
Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur defended Hamilton’s recent run of penalties across the British, Belgian, and Hungarian rounds. The French executive stressed that each incident had an entirely different context.
“It’s difficult to put all the penalties in the same basket; for me, the accident with [George] Russell [at Spa] it’s a race incident.
“And I think if he has to do it again, I would ask him to do exactly the same because he can’t go on the kerb and so on.”
A chain reaction of mistakes
According to Vasseur, the pit lane speeding infringement that caused Hamilton to drop from P4 to P5 was not an isolated misjudgment by the British driver, but rather the result of a chain reaction starting from the pit stop. He suggested that Hamilton was probably trying to turn the misfortune around after he locked his wheels trying to hit his marks.
“Today, it’s probably that succession of mistakes that he locked the wheel in the pit stop, that we lost a couple of tenths during the pit stop, and then probably he was trying to be optimum on the pit limit release, and it was a bit too early than the optimum.
“I think it’s when you start to do a mistake, it’s quite easy to do more than one, and this weekend is a good example that when we were trying to push during the pit stop and so, we were losing something that the pit exit, and we were two tenths of a second behind someone, and it’s a succession of facts.
“The pace was decent, but we were completely unable to overtake Max [Verstappen] at the beginning, then [Oscar] Piastri.”
Entering the summer break, Hamilton is currently 50 points down on the championship leader, Kimi Antonelli, who holds 219 points. His fight with the young Italian driver is still on while defending his second position in the 2026 Drivers’ Standings against the other half of Mercedes, George Russell.
