2025 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[ScuderiaLeo]

They saw Mclaren and just moved to 2026 development in April apparently. I guess they will also get more wind tunnel time too. Really if you are going to be rubbish, do it right before a reg change to get more resources.

Moving to 2026 early doesn't excuse how inconsistent they've been in extracting their current package's performance. Every team has moved to 2026 by now and yet only Ferrari struggled this hard in this GP.

Leclerc said something similar after the race. He doesn't expect to compete for wins. He's not upset the car is "bad", that's not what he's frustrated about. He's frustrated that they had so many ideas, put many hours into the sim, looked at different setups, etc but none of it correlated with what they were expecting. That indicates a deeper problem than the current car just being bad.

[F1NAC]

They saw Mclaren and just moved to 2026 development in April apparently.

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.

Teams probably work on a few concept designs and ultimately see what suits their car in a whole. You can bet that some teams tried something similar to Mercedes in 2022 and saw that it was not worth it. Probably most visible differentiator between teams could again be pre 2017 - rake angles

[bluechris]

I am with them if this is the case and they moved on very early but why they moaning from the drivers and false promises from the management? Man up, explain from the start that you totally failed this year's car and move on. No one will hold a grudge but instead they still say that they try etc.
That's the mistake imo.

[AR3-GP]

I am with them if this is the case and they moved on very early but why they moaning from the drivers and false promises from the management? Man up, explain from the start that you totally failed this year's car and move on. No one will hold a grudge but instead they still say that they try etc.
That's the mistake imo.

This is what I said too. The drivers have spent the last 7 weekends taking cheap shots at the team, and sowing more discord between the team and fans, when the drivers were in on the decision to abandon the season.

[Farnborough]

The 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.

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.

This was compounded by the absolute pantomime enacted by Mercedes as they most of all didn't understand their own design failings. All of that crappshoot of drivers hobbling around etc, properly scuppered Ferrari’s complete design strategy for this era.
Further issue came from FIA change to floor throat and edges for 2023, which forced everyone to just "slam" the chassis if they were to chase more vertical load.
Its Mercedes that have a lot to answer for in this team's performance, and the FIA response to that catastrophic design.

[AR3-GP]

I am with them if this is the case and they moved on very early but why they moaning from the drivers and false promises from the management? Man up, explain from the start that you totally failed this year's car and move on. No one will hold a grudge but instead they still say that they try etc.
That's the mistake imo.

This is what I said too. In particular, the drivers have spent the last 7 or so weekends ramping up the pressure and taking cheap shots at the team. Fans of team have been fueled by it to say less than flattering things...meanwhile the drivers were in on the decision to abandon the season? What is going on here?

Teams like Sauber, Racing Bulls, and others who know the car isn't good enough just get on with it. That's what the Ferrari drivers should have done. They know the decisions that were made behind the scenes and they know why they are slow. Why all the drama?

[ScuderiaLeo]

When has Leclerc ever taken a cheap shot at the team? I understand this view towards Hamilton (even though I don't agree with it) but I can't think of Leclerc ever saying anything unreasonable.

This weekend, he said:

1. They don't know why they had correlation problems and this is really frustrating. This is different from the car being slow in general, he was talking about the car being slow THIS weekend and how they went from being 3rd-4th fastest to even lower than that.
2. Stopping development early isn't an excuse for not knowing so he understands why the fans are upset.
3. He hasn't expected to win this year but he does expect to get points, so being close to not getting them is concerning to him.
4. He isn't optimistic about AD but he'll try because he doesn't want to go into the break with low morale.
5. He apologized to the fans for how bad their weekend was and there's no sugar coating the fact they underperformed as a whole.
6. He said after qualifying he made his own mistakes too.

To me, this is the opposite of "whining" or taking "shots" at the team. I don't want him to lie and say everything is fine but I also don't want him to say there's no point in trying. Pointing out the car is bad or the team (including himself) is underperforming is not the same as "whining", whining would be if he said "I do everything here and nobody supports me" or "Why isn't the team just building a better car for us".

Even when he's been frustrated this season he's always defended the team's work ethic and the effort they're putting in. I've never seen a single instance of him throwing the team under the bus or claiming they're letting him down. Also for what should be obvious reasons, Leclerc's expectations for this season were higher than a driver from Sauber or VCARB, and this is part of why he keeps apologizing to the fans...

[venkyhere]

The 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.

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.

This was compounded by the absolute pantomime enacted by Mercedes as they most of all didn't understand their own design failings. All of that crappshoot of drivers hobbling around etc, properly scuppered Ferrari’s complete design strategy for this era.
Further issue came from FIA change to floor throat and edges for 2023, which forced everyone to just "slam" the chassis if they were to chase more vertical load.
Its Mercedes that have a lot to answer for in this team's performance, and the FIA response to that catastrophic design.

Good point. Didn't think of it that holistically. Almost forgot about the 2022 theatrics by Wolff and Hamilton & the TD039 that followed. Completely broke the beautiful 'bathtub' F1-75. In fact it was TD039 that has led to the ban on 'floor dampers' in this era and led the whole regulation into a world of concrete suspensions, grinding off kerbs as a track feature, and so much focus on 'tyre behavior' being a huge deciding factor.

Btw, FredVasseur concurs, on the 'higher-tyre-pressure-ruins-SF25' theory : https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferr ... /10781475/

[Farnborough]

Yes, we had a good season there in 2022 suffocated.

Two very different chassis/aero concept up against each other with some fabulous racing.

Mercedes loaded the drama cannon .... and shot both of Ferrari’s feet off

Interesring the interview with Fred, and my feelings are clear about this anyway. I felt genuinely sorry for all in this team here in Qatar, with this element having such profound effect on their concept.

Pressures looked to have pulled MB back here, you can observe it in RB too, likely a big component in McL LV setup fail and final exclusion too.

They're all close to problematic interaction with pressures/resonance in tyres, rear especially it appears to me.

[f1isgood]

Yes, we had a good season there in 2022 suffocated.

Two very different chassis/aero concept up against each other with some fabulous racing.

Mercedes loaded the drama cannon .... and shot both of Ferrari’s feet off

Interesring the interview with Fred, and my feelings are clear about this anyway. I felt genuinely sorry for all in this team here in Qatar, with this element having such profound effect on their concept.

Pressures looked to have pulled MB back here, you can observe it in RB too, likely a big component in McL LV setup fail and final exclusion too.

They're all close to problematic interaction with pressures/resonance in tyres, rear especially it appears to me.

I thought Mercedes were quite good, just that Russell failed to deliver. Ferrari were a bottom 3 car around Qatar though.