Ferrari has improved its car to the point it has the pace to fight with McLaren at times throughout the rest of the 2025 season but can’t match McLaren’s consist form, according to team principal Fred Vasseur.
Lando Norris led home a McLaren one-two in the Hungarian Grand Prix before the start of the summer break, but Charles Leclerc had secured Ferrari’s first pole position of the season and led the opening two stints of the race. A loss of performance in the final stint spoiled Leclerc’s hopes and he ended up finishing fourth, but after a podium in Belgium – where the Ferrari also qualified in the top three – Vasseur sees the outright performance being close to McLaren.
“It’s mega difficult to predict, also because I think the picture of one day is not necessarily true the next weekend,” Vasseur said. “But at least I would say that the last two [races] that we are back on the pace.
“We are consistently on it – not the last stint; I’m not completely stupid, guys – we are quite consistent on the tires, we are able to manage the pace and if we are back in qualifying, it means that we will fight with them.
“I think that the advantage that they have today is that they are always there – it doesn’t matter [the conditions]. OK, in qualifying we were a bit faster, but it was marginal and they are performing in every single condition when we are a bit more inconsistent during the weekend.
“We need to be very consistent in every single condition. In the free practice to have a good preparation for the race, in Q1, Q2, Q3, with all the sets in the race, with the different compounds and so on. I think it’s where today they are a bit more performant than us.”
While Vasseur says it’s tough to fully analyze Ferrari’s relative race pace against McLaren in Budapest due to track position, he believes there were signs that it was a true match, which only adds to the disappointment of the late drop-off in performance.
“First of all, I think you have to also keep the dirty air in mind. You do the pole position, it’s always a bit easier to stay in front than to be behind,” he said. “I don’t know if the gap in the first stint is two tenths with [Oscar] Piastri or it’s one tenth, but in this magnitude, I think the pace was there.
“We were even able to extend a little bit when we were under pressure with the pit stop. It means that we had the pace at this stage to do one or two tenths more or less. I think this part of the race went very well for us, that it was really under control, that we didn’t have the feeling to push too much. We were even able to extend, but we didn’t lose the consistency and the tires at all.
“That means that it’s even worse for the frustration, because if in the first stint you are leading like this and you have to pit on lap 12 because you have no tires anymore, it’s, ‘OK, I pushed too much.’ But it was not the case at all – we stopped just to avoid the undercut, but we could have done a couple of laps more at the same pace. It’s frustrating.”
