A subdued Sebastian Vettel said he was not surprised that he and Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc were both lapped by Mercedes race-winner Lewis Hamilton in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
The four-time champion said he had expected Ferrari to struggle to make an impact, but felt satisfied that the team had at last made some progress following a poor start to the 2020 season.
Hamilton claimed his second win this year after team-mate Valtteri Bottas won the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix. Both drivers lapped the Ferrari pairing this time, with Bottas finishing third, just metres behind Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.
Vettel came home sixth and Leclerc 11th.
“Are you surprised? I’m not,” said Vettel. “It was already pretty clear that they would lap us before the race so it was not a surprise…”
He said that he and Leclerc had at least seen Ferrari recover from the previous week’s embarrassment at Spielberg where they had collided.
“It was back to normal, obviously Austria ‘one’ was the outlier so Austria ‘two’ it didn’t happen and now we are here,” he explained.
“I think probably today this was where we should finish, fifth or sixth, but probably not further up.”
Leclerc said he felt he had problems with his car.
“To be honest, I think there was something wrong in the race. It just doesn’t match with the car I had in qualifying.
“We haven’t changed much, so we will be looking at the data to see what is wrong. The car was extremely hard to drive today.”
