Ferrari full of flaws in Formula 1 in 2025: can the Scuderia up their performances?

Five rounds down, nineteen left on the table in the 2025 F1 season. One of the biggest letdowns in my eyes so far this year is the most iconic team in the sport: Scuderia Ferrari. It hurts to acknowledge, as a Ferrari fan myself, but there is no denying that the Italian team has been massively underdelivering in the opening part of the season. So, it is time to take a good hard look at the team that has participated in every Formula 1 season to date.

Leclerc during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend, retrieved from Motorsport Week.

The leading Ferrari driver in the championship is Charles Leclerc, by wrapping up 47 points and one podium finish, the Monegasque sits in fourth place in the standings. Their new signing in 2025, Lewis Hamilton, seems to struggle with the car even after five Grand Prix weekends. The veteran would have surely expected something more out of his groundbreaking transfer move, but it seems like red is just not the right color for the Brit. Considering Ferrari ended up almost winning the constructors championship last year, this is surely not where they belong. This is especially strange since the regulations barely changed compared to the 2024 F1 season, meaning that somehow their quick package from last year did not translate to quick machinery this year.

Hamilton’s promising win rewarded with another letdown

But did Ferrari not win a (sprint) race this year? Some might wonder. And, indeed, Hamilton surprisingly took a pole position and victory for China’s sprint race, which ultimately put expectations slightly too high. Looking back on this result, it seems as if Ferrari was as surprised as anyone else by winning the race. Especially when Grand Prix qualifying came about, and the Ferrari’s were set back to P5 and P6 on the grid. Another one-off this weekend was Hamilton’s pace. The seven-time world champion beat his teammate in both qualifying sessions, increasing the hopes he had adjusted rather quickly to the new surroundings. But whereas Leclerc managed to get top five finishes in all races since China, Hamilton struggled to crack the top five, coming home for a P7 in Japan and Saudi Arabia for example.

The Saturday glory in China was brutally washed away on Sunday. The Scuderia drivers finished in fifth and sixth place, however, a couple of hours later they would both be disqualified due to technical infringements. Charles Leclerc’s car was under the minimum weight, and Hamilton’s skid plank on the bottom of his car had thinned out too much during the race. Ferrari explained they had run Lewis’ car too low on the setup, and Leclerc suffered from a leaking water system which reduced the car’s weight among some other things such as worn-down tires. All things considered, for a team that has 75 years of experience in the pinnacle of motorsport, these mistakes are unacceptable.

Hamilton and Leclerc during the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix, retrieved from The Race.

Ferrari’s future perspective

Leclerc has been performing well so far, with top five finishes in every race apart from Australia, had he not been disqualified in China. But for Ferrari to win a championship, which is their goal every single year, I believe it must wait at least another year. Hamilton underperforms, there is no way to sugarcoat it, but not only that, the Brit has also struggled with communication between himself and his race engineer. In F1 drivers are quite often relying on getting the right data at the right time from their team, and it seems like neither Hamilton nor Riccardo Adami understand one another. This is a worrying sign, and it only adds to the toughness of adapting to a new team for the ex-Mercedes man.

Team boss Fred Vasseur, however, is still mildly positive in the Scuderia’s chances highlighting that their main problem is: “Qualifying, that is clear,” Vasseur said. “The pace has always been very good in the race.” The question remains, how do they move forward from there though? Well, I must say that Vasseur has brought the team a glorious time since 2023, and it seemed like finally the main struggle was disappearing: a lack of consistency. Right now, to be fair, it might not be consistency that is their main struggle and as Vasseur explains about their car, the SF-25: “When you understand where the problems are, you can work to solve them and we think we have understood where to intervene.” He ended by highlighting that: “We keep the same approach as last year and think race by race.”

What about a race-by-race plan? Honestly, I think the Italian team should plan a bit further ahead considering the state of their car at this point in time. The first big upgrades shall come in on hoe soil in Imola, three weeks from now. So, hopefully these upgrades will bridge the gap to McLaren, Mercedes, and Red Bull ever so slightly