An extremely bad weekend. The performance was never there. There wasn't a single good lap. In qualifying, we were nowhere, and that conditioned our entire weekend.
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Following his sensational lap in Saturday's qualifying which saw Charles Leclerc claim a shock pole position for Ferrari, the Monegasque endured a heartbreaking result at the Hungarian Grand Prix despite his impressive pace during his first two stints of the race. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his latest analysis in his column branded as F1MATHS.
An extremely bad weekend. The performance was never there. There wasn't a single good lap. In qualifying, we were nowhere, and that conditioned our entire weekend.
Right after this he said he was so bored in the car, he started imagining the different scenarios for the WDC battle based on what he was seeing on the screens
Yea i dont think either driver enjoyed it, Lewis was complaining about how miserable it was mid race and asked adami if anyone even managed an overtake after the raceScuderiaLeo wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 20:26Right after this he said he was so bored in the car, he started imagining the different scenarios for the WDC battle based on what he was seeing on the screens
But what about the unused potential of the car? Surely there was loads.ScuderiaLeo wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 20:14When Vasseur was asked what positives can be taken from this weekend, he simply said "None."
At least he's being honest. One more week and we can be free of this car. I just don't have faith 2026 will be better.
"I didn't have confidence in the car, I didn't have the pace, I had nothing in the car, so... I'm genuinely relieved that the weekend is over. It was a very frustrating race, from the very first lap to the last."
- "Once again, after what happened yesterday on the first lap, I didn't have confidence and I didn't know what was going to happen with the car in the first few laps. We weren't competitive for a single lap throughout the entire weekend, which was really very frustrating."
- "It hurts me, I'm really sorry. I don't want to create false hopes, but we also have to say what we think. At the beginning of the year, I was convinced that we had done good work, but the result is that it wasn't enough. We need to do much more to achieve our goals. We are doing a lot, we are working a lot."
- "We'll see how it goes next year. This year, we sacrificed the second part of the season to work on next year's car, so it's not surprising that we're struggling right now. What is surprising is being this far behind this weekend, because we can't explain such a performance by the fact that we started developing the next car. I'm not satisfied and we need to find answers."
- "I'm looking forward to getting to Abu Dhabi and trying to end the season on a more positive note, hoping to give ourselves a bit more happiness before the holidays. Because it would be quite depressing to go on vacation after two weekends like this one. It would be really very negative, so I hope we'll have a better weekend. A podium would be nice, but after this weekend, I really have little hope."
"Charles and I gave everything to get the maximum out of this car. But I think this race shows that the others have developed longer and much more this season."
- "We're really struggling to keep up with the other teams or stay ahead of Williams. It shows how much the others have progressed, and I hope our sacrifices were worth it."
- "What do I need besides a good car? That's not something I want to talk about in public. But there are a lot of things to change. There are many areas where we need to improve, so over the next few months, we'll have to focus on the positive points and hold onto them, but also change everything that's not working.
Yes. After being not in competition at all at the beginning of the season it was correct to put everything on 26. I think that was anyways always the target with getting Ham into the car in 25, just prepare on 26. Very similar to Merc in 2013.
It means absolutely nothing and RBR has proven that you can develop a car to the very end of the season right before a reg change and still fight at the top the following season. It’s not like they have better resources than Ferrari, right?
Part of me thinks that being too advanced in your development for 2026 may actually be a disadvantage early on. Chances are someone else is going to show up with a concept that is fundamentally better, as we saw in 2022, and it's harder to pivot if you are deep into your own concept (zeropod). Trying to nail the hardpoints (like suspension and weight distribution) but keeping back some of your aero budget might be wise.
You can not bring budgets from one season to the other. So just running whole R&D on the new car in not stupid. But I fail to see why they are so bad in trackside operations.
Well, RB this season also has a very strange concept. As we have seen, they do not even have the floor anymore they had in Monza on the car...just because they produced only two.
These big Pirelli tyres were a horrible idea and then the added addition of too much stiffness of the suspension and wheel covers, yeah the ground effect era was a disaster and Qatar definitely showed why. Can't even use the ground effect effectively because of the risk of plank wear.venkyhere wrote: ↑01 Dec 2025, 19:03The SF25 is a bad car, but it's been an upper-midfielder/top4 car (depending on the track) for majority of the season. We all know the reason - too much risk changing the very skeleton of SF24, and producing a worse car. That said, I believe the reason the SF25 has been really bad, tailender level car over the last few races, is tyre pressure. Pirelli's has been monotonically increasing the min.pressures towards the end this season, and it has really thrown the SF25 into 'untenable' territory, because the 'band-aid' setups that they have been eking out, no longer puts the car in a workable window. Every team, apart from Mclaren has been struggling to adapt these high-tyre pressures, but they have somehow managed, but for Ferrari it has exposed the car's fundamental weakness - kinematics and aero not working together. I have a strong feeling this is the case.
Doesn't sound like they got anything good cooking for 2026 either though.