Fred Vasseur outlines Ferrari upgrade priorities

A late 5-second penalty for pit-lane speeding ultimately denied Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari a top three finish in Hungary, only the Scuderia’s third time outside the podium in 2026.

With two victories in the last five races, Ferrari have put themselves within touching distance of Mercedes in the constructors title.

Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton is Kimi Antonelli’s closest challenger in the drivers standings – sitting just ahead of George Russell in the second Mercedes.

However, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur recognises that more improvements are necessary for the SF-26 to dream of a Championship bid – and thus updates are on the way.

Ferrari work to close gap to Mercedes

Heading into this season, Mercedes were almost unanimously seen as the favourites. This assumption has been largely validated, given the W17’s consistently strong level of performance throughout 2026.

With that said, the Silver Arrows are by no means comfortable at the front.

Ferrari have been the German constructors’ biggest rivals this season, being the only other team with multiple race wins this season.

Although both Hamilton and Leclerc’s victories in Spain and Silverstone were both somewhat dependent on mishaps from Mercedes, the SF-26 was still competitive enough to capitalise on the mistakes from Toto Wolff’s team.

Moreover, there have also been weekends – like most recently in Hungary – where the Scuderia have failed to optimise their package. Pole Position was clearly on the table in Budapest, and Fred Vasseur also believes there was untapped potential on race day.

The Frenchman has called for his personnel to find lap-time in all areas:

“What we have to improve, if I draw a conclusion based on today, I would say execution. But execution so far has been a good one for us, from the beginning of the season.

“We know that we have to improve on the engine side, and we will do it. The inertia on the engines is much higher than on the chassis.

“The most important would be to be able to keep pace into the development.

“McLaren did a good job for a while but they don’t have exactly the same philosophy, because they are waiting on a big package and this is the last one.

“For sure, each time that they are doing something, they are making a huge step. But we have a different approach, trying to bring parts every race.

“And we have to keep this momentum. Because there are still races to go, you know, it’s a lot.

“We are going for improvement, and you should see everywhere, and we have to keep this pace.”

McLaren join the race to catch Mercedes

Of course, Ferrari are not the only ones working to give Mercedes headaches, evidenced most recently by McLaren’s victory in Hungary.

After falling behind teammate Oscar Piastri on the first lap, Lando Norris wasted little time in creating distance to the rest of the field once in clean air.

Having spent the first few months of the year trying to optimise and understand the Mercedes engine, McLaren are starting to show flashes of great potential with the MCL40.

Reliability still remains an issue, but the British team’s capacity to make big steps forward mid-season cannot be discounted.

Therefore, Ferrari will have to outperform two Mercedes-powered teams to finish the season at the front of the pack.