Hamilton 'frustrated, but not demotivated' – Vasseur

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says Lewis Hamilton is frustrated but not demotivated after a number of harsh comments during the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend.

Hamilton described himself as “absolutely useless” after dropping out in Q2 in qualifying, adding that Ferrari “probably need to change driver” after seeing teammate Charles Leclerc take pole position. The seven-time world champion was similarly downbeat after finishing 12th – the same position he started – saying he wouldn’t change his previous comments.

“Not particularly,” Hamilton told Sky Sports. “When you have a feeling, you have a feeling. There’s a lot going on in the background that is not great, so…”

Hamilton did add that, “I still love the team,” when pushed on his love of racing, and Vasseur says fans should not take his demeanor in Budapest as a lack of motivation.

“I don't need to motivate him,” Vasseur said. “Honestly, he's frustrated, but not demotivated. It's a completely different story. I can perfectly understand the situation. Sometimes you are making comments on what the driver is saying in the car, but if you put the microphone on some other sportsmen in football and so on, I'm not sure that it would be much better.

“They are in the performance and sometimes they are making comments, even when they jump out of the car. I can understand the frustration, but we are all frustrated. Sometimes if you ask me, I can't [answer immediately]; I will go to the stewards! But sometimes just after the race or just after qualifying, you are very disappointed and the first reaction is harsh.

“We all know that we are pushing in the same direction and the good side of today is that, when we are putting everything together, we are able to do the pole position and to lead the first 40 laps. If you are able to lead the first 40 laps, you can go to the end. Now we have to find why we lost the pace and to correct it for the next one.”

Vasseur also says the end result at the Hungaroring was a byproduct of the starting position, pointing to Max Verstappen’s ninth-placed finish after a challenging qualifying as another example of how competitive the field is this year.

“I would prefer to do P1 and P1, but we already know that you could ask the same question to Max," he said. "As a championship, this season is completely different – it's very, very tight. When you are not on the pace, you can do [P12] in qualifying.

“We know that yesterday in qualifying, it didn't go well. Then we took some bets, and when you do a bet like this to start with hards, you know that you can lose positions or not. We lost, and then we did the bet also to go for one stop, because when you are P14 and you have a train of DRS, you have to do different, and it didn't work.”