Ferrari explains “succession of mistakes” that led to latest Lewis Hamilton F1 penalty

Ferrari Formula 1 team boss Fred Vasseur says a “succession of mistakes” contributed to Lewis Hamilton’s five-second penalty at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Scuderia came into the Hungaroring round as the favourite for victory, given the SF-26’s chassis strength.

But Ferrari walked away from the weekend without a podium, while Lewis Hamilton was hit with separate penalties for impeding in qualifying and for speeding in the pitlane in the race.

Hamilton had been running in the podium battle when Ferrari pitted him for soft tyres during the late virtual safety car caused by Oscar Piastri’s stoppage.

He copped a five-second penalty for pitlane speeding, which dropped him to fifth at the chequered flag.

‘Once one mistake happens, another is easy…’

Hamilton was 0.1km/h over the pitlane speed limit, with Vasseur believing that the Briton was trying to recover from locking up on his way into his stop.

“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,” he said.

“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 curb and so on.

“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, and point taken for the rest of the season.”

The brace of penalties for Hamilton in Hungary marked his fourth in three rounds, following punishments for a collision with Russell at Spa and a false start at Silverstone.

Heading into the summer break, Hamilton is now 50 points down on championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli.