Vettel laments narrow defeat at Hungary

Budapest: Sebastian Vettel thought he had the Hungarian Grand Prix in the bag on Sunday but ended up disappointed and disgruntled while Red Bull teammate Mark Webber grabbed another win.

Vettel has now started seven of the 12 races on pole position and won just twice, with only one of those coming from the top slot on the grid.

Webber, the man many thought would play a supporting role to the most-heralded German driver since seven times world champion Michael Schumacher, has now won four times - twice as many as anyone else on the starting grid this season - and leads the championship.

The Australian was all smiles on the podium while Vettel was all scowls, shaking his hands and fist in the air as he went down the pit lane for a drive-through penalty that scuppered his chances.

At the post race weigh-in before the prizegiving, he remonstrated with race observer Herbie Blash like a sulky schoolboy.

"He wears his heart on his sleeve and you can see today that he is desperately disappointed to have lost a pretty much certain grand prix victory," team boss Christian Horner told reporters.

"Unfortunately, today didn't go his way, but he's had a black cloud following him for most of the season. But it's all about the points at the end of the year."

Vettel, the only frontrunner yet to lead the championship, can indeed claim more than his fair share of bad luck despite his dominance in qualifying.

He was slowed by a faulty spark plug in Bahrain while leading that race from pole, finishing fourth, and crashed out in Australia with a brake failure after again setting the fastest time in qualifying.

In Canada, he was slowed by a gearbox leaking oil and in Britain had to pit at the end of the first lap with a puncture caused by a collision with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.

The 23-year-old raced away at a second a lap at the start on Sunday but then it all went wrong when the safety car was deployed.

He partly blamed a faulty radio for his woes, although that explanation appeared to be on flimsy ground and received little support from his team.

"It's premature to blame the radio for this one," said Horner.

"He's obviously frustrated after today but it's part of a learning curve and there're seven races to go," Horner added.

Vettel, who was penalised for failing to maintain the correct distance behind the safety car, recognised his error.

"At the re-start, I was sleeping. I was probably relying too much on the radio but somewhere in the first stint, I lost the radio connection and I didn't hear anything," he said.

"I still do not really understand why I did get a penalty," he added. "In the end, I should have won. For some reason, it did not happen and we finished third."