Scuderia Ferrari arrived at the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix with high hopes, only to see their strategy unravel on the tight, twisty Hungaroring track.
Ferrari's Team Principal Fred Vasseur revealed that the team's compromised free practice program forced them into a corner, where they made two bets that ultimately failed. The team never considered Red Bull's late-race soft tire push, as they pitted a little earlier than Max Verstappen and it seemed too ambitious to think they could go to the end of the race without taking tyre life into account.
The root cause of that hesitation was a severe lack of long-run data gathered prior to Sunday. Ferrari's drivers and engineers didn't have the opportunity to complete a long run on all three tyre compounds during free practice, so they made two bets that didn't pay off.
Ferrari's lack of long-run confidence was exposed during the closing stages of the Grand Prix. With 16 laps remaining in the race, McLaren's Oscar Piastri suffered a gearbox failure that triggered a brief VSC period. The Ferrari pit wall blinked, calling Lewis Hamilton into the pits, attempting to utilize an undercut strategy with a fresh set of soft tires to push to the checkered flag.
However, the gamble to surrender track position completely backfired. Hamilton was not only forced to relinquish his podium spot to Verstappen, but a slight miscalculation on the pit limiter exiting the box slapped the seven-time champion with a razor-thin 0.1 km/h speeding penalty.
Without the crucial free practice data to properly model tire degradation on the Hungaroring's demanding surface, Ferrari was left flying blind against a Red Bull squad that executed perfectly. Ferrari must figure out how to lock in their setups earlier in the weekend, or risk making more losing bets on Sunday.
Source: Yahoo Sports