Ferrari boss, Fred Vasseur admits disappointment as being unable to give his team's adoring Tifosi at least a podium.

Already compromised by a grid penalty for one of its drivers, the Scuderia had to settle for fourth and a distant sixth after a strategic gamble with Lewis Hamilton failed to pay off.

"I think today that first it's a shame and I'm disappointed to not be able to bring a podium to the Tifosi, because when you see the fans on the start and finish line and the podium, it would have been magic and they deserve it," said the Frenchman.

"But I think we are close to the McLaren today," he added. "It's probably the smallest gap of the season. I think that Max was outstanding."

Indeed, while Charles Leclerc was just 4s down on Oscar Piastri, the Monegasque was 25s down on the race winner.

"From the first lap to the last lap, he was there, he was flying and he was much faster than us," said Vasseur of Verstappen. "But overall, I think compared to Mercedes and to McLaren, we did our job. It's not enough, but we did our job."

Looking for positives, he said: "We are one tenth off the first row yesterday. Even if you play differently with the engine modes, the fuel and so in practice, we are speaking about 3-4 kilos of fuel, this we never know.

"But it's true also that even in the race it's the smallest gap with McLaren, it was also the smallest gap in FP3, the smallest gap in qualifying, in FP1, and I think we are in better shape this weekend.

"It's not enough," he admitted, "because they are in front of us, but I think at least we closed the gap this weekend."

While Verstappen headed off into the distance at the start, with Norris in hot pursuit, it was the battle behind, for third, that intrigued, with Leclerc nailing Piastri in Turn 1 on successive laps.

"It was a nice battle," said the Monegasque. "I felt like I was overtaking when he was doing a mistake and he was overtaking me when I did a mistake.

"They just had more pace than I did," he admitted of his futile bid to overhaul the Australian. "I tried things that I think weren't in the car and I lost the rear multiple times. That meant I couldn't hope for much better unfortunately.

"I tried. I don't have any regrets," he insisted. "Unfortunately today the pace of the car was a little bit worse than what we expected."

"I think overall our performance was fairly decent," said teammate Hamilton. "We obviously don't have the pace of the cars much further ahead, so competing for the top three is off the cards for a while, but we keep pushing and trying to extract more.

"This weekend built a lot on my confidence with the car," he added, "but definitely I'm still not 100 per cent comfortable in the car."

The seven-time world champion beleives his team's cause wasn 't helped by the grid penalty carried over from Zandvoort.

"I'm sure we didn't have the pace of the McLarens and the Red Bulls," he said. "But I definitely think Charles and I, if we were (starting) together, we could have had a strong race in perhaps keeping up with, maybe trying to keep up more with the guys further ahead.

"I really don't know," he admitted. "I just think they were just too fast, the guys further ahead, but I definitely think we would have been fifth, fourth.

"I had a really good start," he said "I had to lift just after because it was such a good start, and then I got kind of squeezed in between two cars.

"But other than that I positioned the car really nicely and I think made my way forwards, and I think I could have got fifth today.

"I think I was 1.5 seconds behind George, we should have tried to undercut him. But we missed that opportunity, then I was miles behind after that."

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