Ferrari 'confident' Spa upgrade findings will 'pay off' at Hungarian GP

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur says he is "confident" that the information Ferrari gathered by debuting their latest upgrades at the Belgian Grand Prix will "pay off" at this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Italian team brought a long-awaited new rear suspension to Spa, but the truncated practice schedule at the Sprint event gave Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc limited time to experiment with the new parts.

The results were largely encouraging as Leclerc claimed a hard-fought podium in third, while Hamilton recovered from a qualifying blunder to move up from 18th at the start to seventh at the chequered flag.

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Asked after Sunday's race whether the upgrades require more fine tuning, Vasseur said: "For sure, you have some upgrades during the season where it's paying off from lap one, and some others that you have to fine-tune and to understand exactly the behaviour, to understand the correlation with the brakes, ride height and so on.

"We are still in this process. If I have to choose for sure, I would have preferred to have Spa on the normal weekend and to do a kind of slow introduction and to do it step by step, but I'm not choosing the calendar and it was better to do it in this weekend, taking some risk.

"It was the best choice to do it in Belgium and to do the best preparation for Budapest."

Leclerc said in Belgium that he believes the new rear suspension will particularly enhance the SF-25's performance in slow-speed corners, which there are far more of in Hungary than Spa.

Asked whether that belief boosts Ferrari's expectations for the Hungaroring, Vasseur replied: "We were not that magic on low-speed corners this weekend. It means that we still have some improvement to do.

"But I'm quite confident that all the tasks that we collected this weekend will pay off in Budapest."

Rosberg: Great to see Hamilton pushing Ferrari direction

Hamilton endured a mixed weekend at Spa as he was knocked in the first part of both qualifying sessions before surging through the field in wet conditions to score some points on Sunday.

Ahead of the race in Belgium, the seven-time world champion revealed the steps he has been taking in attempting to help Ferrari turn around an underwhelming start to their 2025 campaign.

Hamilton said he has been submitting documents to the team's management and that he "refuses" to become the latest star driver to fail to win a championship with the Italian squad.

Speaking on the latest episode of The F1 Show, Sky Sports F1 pundit Nico Rosberg said he was encouraged by his former team-mate's approach.

"I was personally very involved with the engineering and direction that was being set," Rosberg said.

"It's nice to hear that Lewis is also really pushing that out because he could also be giving up.

"He could say, 'what the hell I've done it all? Why do I need to struggle through this now again?' But he's really, really pushing on, super committed and super motivated, which is great to see."

Despite his fightback at Spa, Hamilton remains without a grand prix podium 13 races into the season, while Leclerc has amassed five.

Rosberg says that will be difficult for Hamilton to cope with, but is predicting that could change this weekend at a circuit where Hamilton has eight victories.

"It's not an easy situation for him," Rosberg said. "Leclerc had such an amazing weekend, and Lewis was just struggling all over the place, and finished almost last in qualifying and then finished seventh in the race.

"Yes, it was a great race from him, but when your team-mate finishes third, it's a tough one, and going to want to find some progress there.

"Hungary is his strongest track in the world, together with Montreal. There are two tracks that I never won at, which are Montreal and Hungary, and that's just because Lewis was untouchable in those in those places!"

F1 heads to the Hungarian Grand Prix for the final race before the sport's summer break, watch live on Sky Sports F1 from Friday. Stream Sky Sports with NOW - no contract, cancel anytime