A Ferrari resurgence or a Mercedes gift?

In the end this was a smash and grab of the sort Williams couldn't quite manage at Silverstone last time out.

Once again the two Mercedes were the class of the Formula 1 field, but yet again they threw away a formidable advantage with extremely poor starts.

Unlike at Silverstone, where Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg recovered to finish one-two, Mercedes wasn't able to bounce back in the Hungarian Grand Prix, allowing Sebastian Vettel to record his second win of the season for Ferrari and match the late Ayrton Senna's tally of 41 F1 career victories.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted after the Hungaroring race that his drivers' recent bad getaways were starting to become a major concern. Hamilton and Rosberg comfortably locked out the front row in qualifying, but within seconds of the race getting under way (at the second attempt thanks to Felipe Massa forming up out of position first time around), the duo found themselves running third and fourth.

"We were jumped by the two Williams last time, jumped by the two Ferraris this time - we need to get on top of the situation, because it is unacceptable," Wolff said.

"It's very difficult to get the calibration right, but from what I heard on the radio we had two very good practice starts, and then when it mattered we had too much wheelspin and [were] overtaken in a way you can't recover."

Vettel forced his way around Hamilton off the line, while Raikkonen followed his team-mate past as the field rounded Turn 1 for the first time.

Rosberg made a slightly better start than Hamilton and dived down the inside of his title rival, but he then locked up trying to prevent Raikkonen taking second spot into Turn 2, so had to concede to the second SF15-T.

Ferrari thus found itself in a winning position, a situation that looked unthinkable after a terrible practice on Friday.

The Scuderia has struggled to keep pace with Mercedes since May's Spanish GP, and looked in danger of slipping into the clutches of Williams and Red Bull, especially after a British GP in which the rain saved Ferrari from being beaten by Williams, and possibly Daniil Kvyat's Red Bull too.

Team principal Maurizio Arrivabene said his squad expected to be better at the Hungaroring, but Ferrari lost its way badly on Friday.

Both drivers complained of awful understeer, which saps laptime on a circuit that features consecutive sequences of corners. Vettel suffered several spins as Ferrari's set-up changes shifted the balance too far the other way.

"On Friday we were struggling a lot and at one stage James Allison said to me 'if I have to think about the worst day, today is the worst day in my career,'" Arrivabene revealed.

"But we put together everything, we were working with determination, and we were using FP3 to adjust the car.

"After that, on Saturday evening, they said: 'OK, we think we are in a good way,' not thinking about this result, but at least to say we are in a good way."

Ferrari's pace in the grand prix was therefore quite strong, and it looked closer to the sort of form it showed at the beginning of the season, when Raikkonen and Vettel were regularly bothering Hamilton and Rosberg in races.

Arrivabene suggested Ferrari's true speed had been 'hidden' recently, by being forced to run behind other cars.

"Before Friday we were reading our data and we thought that in Hungary it could be a good race," Arrivabene added. "Of course we were not thinking to win the race, but at least to fight.

"Then everything happened on Friday, so on Saturday the first thought was 'guys, calm down, we need to do our analysis, we need to put everything together'.

"We had FP3 to work on the car and we were testing certain solutions, and in the end we had good pace during the race.

"It's also true that when you start as we started today, in the open air, the car is giving you more chance, and for the guys at the back conserving the tyres is quite hard.

"It happens sometimes that we are [further] back and our consumption is higher. Today we were in front and it was OK."

"It makes a difference if you find yourself in clean air," added Vettel. "When following the top two cars, we either don't see them for long, or in other races we are stuck behind so you can't show the true pace.

"But the whole race the pace was really good. Lewis was probably quicker, but he didn't have a smooth grand prix, but this is how it goes sometimes."

Vettel's win was a perfect tribute to former Ferrari junior Jules Bianchi, who passed away in the week building up to the race. The only shame for Ferrari was the MGU-K failure that cost Raikkonen his chance to finish second.

But in truth, however well Ferrari performed at the Hungaroring on Sunday, Mercedes should still have won this grand prix.

Hamilton was on supreme form on Friday and Saturday, on a circuit he loves, that suits his dynamic style, and at which he has been extraordinarily successful throughout his career.

But he made two significant mistakes at key moments, which cost him his chance of recovering from his poor start to challenge Vettel's Sunday supremacy.

First he locked up under braking for the chicane at Turn 6 on lap one, which forced him to run through the gravel and fall back to 10th.

Hamilton complained on the radio about Rosberg changing lines just ahead, but in truth he had already lost control all on his own and was never going to make the corner.

That costly error meant the faster Mercedes was always running in traffic. By lap 41 of 69 he was back up to fourth and closing down Rosberg (who was running the slower medium tyre at that stage), but then another crucial error came.

When the front wing failed on Nico Hulkenberg's Force India, causing him to crash heavily at Turn 1 on lap 42, the FIA deployed the virtual safety car and both Mercedes dived for the pits to make their final scheduled stops.

Then the safety car proper was deployed, to allow marshals to clear the substantial debris on the pit straight, so Hamilton prepared to resume racing in a tight pack, sandwiched between Rosberg ahead and Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull behind.

While Rosberg breezed past the hobbled Ferrari of Raikkonen at the restart, Hamilton was slow to react and found himself under attack from Ricciardo.

Hamilton clattered into the Red Bull at Turn 1 as he attempted to defend position, damaging the Mercedes' front wing.

"I just had no front end and understeered into him", rued Hamilton, who soldiered on in sixth for two more laps, before diving into the pits for a replacement.

Once again the faster Mercedes was mired in traffic, instead of being in a position to challenge at the front, and to make matters worse Hamilton also had to serve a drive-through penalty for causing the collision.

After charging back through to sixth over the final 15 laps, he apologised to his team for what he described as "a bad day at the office".

"It was one of the worst races I think I've had, and all I can do is apologise to the team and work hard to make amends at the next race," Hamilton said.

"A day like today, when you make mistakes and it affects the team, it hurts."

With Hamilton taking himself out of the equation by dint of easily his clumsiest drive of the season, Rosberg was presented with a perfect opportunity to strike back in the championship race, but the German felt he was simply too slow, on both compounds of tyre, to be a serious threat.

He was therefore more concerned with protecting himself from Hamilton than chasing after the Ferraris.

Raikkonen's problem gifted Rosberg second, but he then found himself on the wrong tyre and under attack from Ricciardo's soft-rubbered Red Bull late in the race.

When the pair collided as Ricciardo attempted to wrest second away from Rosberg at Turn 1 with six laps to run, the resultant puncture turned a certain podium into a meagre eighth place for Rosberg.

The German thus found the points gap to title rival Hamilton extended by four, instead of slashed dramatically.

Like his Ferrari rivals, Rosberg suffered a difficult Friday, but unlike them he couldn't recover a decent balance on his car.

"I don't have any explanation," he said.

"On the prime [medium] the pace was a lot better compared to the Ferrari, but on the option [soft] they were quick.

"My balance was also wrong, which was a repercussion of it being so wrong in qualifying. I tried to get it right for the race, but went too far in the other direction with the front wing."

But even with his W06 misbehaving, Rosberg should still have been able to win this race.

His desire to run two stints on the medium tyre, which ran contrary to the team's plan, seemed strange considering how much faster the soft tyre was.

Wolff suggested Rosberg was actually better off on the harder tyre, and his pace relative to Vettel's Ferrari was better when both ran that tyre, but it was still the wrong tyre to want to be on for that last part of the race.

Rosberg's approach seemed too focused on avoiding being outmanoeuvred by Hamilton's recovery, rather than focusing on his own chances to win. Both Rosberg and Wolff conceded afterwards that was the case.

"I was keen to hold my position because Ferrari was too quick," explained Rosberg.

"I got the message he [Hamilton] would stop earlier than me, but it's difficult to judge in that situation. We need to review that.

"I just wanted to make sure I finished third at that point in time, because it was the best I could hope for.

"We then got it wrong at the safety car stop, because surely the soft tyre would have been the better one."

The timing of the virtual safety car rendered this a moot point. There is no doubt Rosberg would have been in a better position to attack Vettel and defend from Ricciardo had he taken a set of soft tyres at his final stop, but Wolff said the virtual safety car came too early for Mercedes to react accordingly.

"It was a very unlucky situation, because you put a tyre under the pod to heat it as an alternative if you break a wing or have an accident and the car comes in, and because it was 27 or 28 laps to the end [when the virtual safety car deployed] the prime [medium] tyre was still under the pod," Wolff explained.

"The virtual safety car came out, he was two corners before the pit, we called him in, and the only tyre available was the prime.

"If he had done the lap under the virtual safety car then we would have switched from the prime to the option [soft] as the final tyre. If the right tyre had been under the heater then that would have been a race to win."

Both Mercedes bouncing off Ricciardo's improved Red Bull ultimately meant neither even made the podium, which was gratefully filled by the cars from Milton Keynes, Kvyat taking a career-best second thanks to Ricciardo's need to pit for a new front wing after colliding with Rosberg.

"This race was definitely for Jules; I left everything on the track," said Ricciardo, who felt the RB11 was finally working properly on a circuit that it was always expected to suit.

"I was inspired today. It's been an emotional week. It's nice to have his family here. This one is definitely for him."

Ricciardo survived three separate contact incidents, in a race in which the FIA handed out eight separate penalties for various misdemeanours.

The nature of the race ultimately helped Fernando Alonso score an "unbelievable" season's best fifth place for McLaren.

Ferrari winning from nowhere, Mercedes nowhere near the podium, a double rostrum for Red Bull, a top-six finish for McLaren, and a group of marshals doing a can-can as Vettel dedicated his victory to Bianchi and his family on the slowing down lap.

It was a crazy race, an enthralling spectacle, Formula 1 at its most exciting and unpredictable.

Jules Bianchi would have loved it.