It's Early in Formula 1, and Ferrari Has Already Faded
Ferrari came just 14 points short of winning the Formula 1's constructors' championship in 2024, but already the fabled Italian team is firmly out of contention for the crown. It is languishing in fourth, 165 points behind the runaway leader, McLaren.
It has just one top three finish this year.
'The beginning has not been easy, we all know that,' Benedetto Vigna, the Ferrari chief executive, said in an conference call earlier in May.
Its car, the SF-25, has not lived up to expectations and has lacked performance across a variety of conditions. Charles Leclerc, who dominated in Monaco 12 months ago to finally win at his home Grand Prix, is pessimistic.
'Unfortunately, I'm really not looking forward to Monaco this year,' Leclerc said after the Miami Grand Prix. 'As I don't think we've got a car to be quick there.'
Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion who joined the team after 12 years at Mercedes, has not looked fully comfortable.
He shone in the sprint race in China, winning from pole position, but he has labored and his mood has fluctuated.
After finishing seventh in Saudi Arabia in April, a downbeat Hamilton said he feared 2025 would be painful and that he was 'struggling to feel the car beneath me,' while also being clueless as to how to address the problem. After the following race in Miami, where he finished eighth, Hamilton was significantly more ebullient, saying, 'I truly believe that when we fix some of the problems that we have with the car, we'll be back in the fight with the Mercedes, with the [Red] Bulls.'
Even accounting for Hamilton's own performances, Ferrari has struggled to extract speed during qualifying sessions and has difficulties getting Pirelli's tires into the optimum operating window for one-lap performance. Those results always heavily dictate Grand Prix results, a trend that has been prominent in 2025 because of the impact of disrupted air flow when following another car. Grid position is also vital for Monaco, less so because of dirty air, but because of the narrow streets that render passing nearly impossible. While Hamilton's average qualifying result in 2025 has been a lowly 8.7, Leclerc — a renowned qualifying specialist with 26 pole positions — is at 6.1.
'I think we need to focus on qualifying,' Leclerc said in Saudi Arabia.
'I feel very at ease with the car in a way that I know I can extract the maximum out of the car more often than not, but unfortunately, the car potential is just not good enough to fight for better in qualifying,' he continued.
Similar sentiments were echoed in Miami, after Leclerc qualified only eighth.
'I feel we are maximizing the potential of the car,' he said. 'It's just that the potential of the car is just not there. And when I finish a lap, again, in qualifying, I feel very satisfied with my lap, but it's only bringing us whatever it is, P8 or something.'
Leclerc said that 'we are just not fast,' adding: 'Whatever we do with the car, we can run it in different ways, but we just don't have the down force that the others have at the moment, especially at low speeds.'
It is possible that Ferrari can remedy its problems by bringing new components, but these take time to design and produce — once an issue is identified — and even then there is no guarantee of its efficacy. Other teams, too, are not standing still.
Operationally, Ferrari has also made mistakes, such as misreading the weather in Australia and suffering a rare double disqualification in China when its cars had separate technical breaches, with one underweight and the other with excessive skid plank wear that rendered it illegal.
Ferrari has two high-caliber drivers, and all the resources at its disposal, but as another new regulation change looms for 2026, a championship, which it last won in 2008, may continue to be out of reach.
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