A special place in hell awaits the Ferrari SF-25
Charles Leclerc's Ferrari is craned away after his retirement at Zandvoort
“Jaw dropping.”
That’s how a source from a rival team put it to PlanetF1.com when the covers came off Ferrari’s 2025 car back in February.
It wasn’t intended as a compliment either.
The last team to make so many changes to its car for the final year of a rules cycle?
McLaren, which completely reworked what had been the fastest car of 2012… and paid for it by going nine years without a win.
Moral of the story? Never change a winning team.
And if you do happen to find yourself in a position to win, never knowingly do anything to tamper with it because you never know when your next chance will come along.
Success in sport must never be taken for granted. Blink and it’s gone.
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So if Fred Vasseur should find himself under pressure for anything right now, a matter of months after signing a new multi-year contract, it should be for needlessly upsetting the balance of a team which was getting on just fine come the end of 2024.
All of Ferrari’s problems this season – including, yes, Lewis Hamilton’s difficulties integrating into his new surroundings – can be traced back to the decision to pursue a different design concept with the SF-25.
It is easy, of course, to understand how all this happened.
In the middle of last season, Ferrari confirmed the departure of technical director Enrico Cardile to Aston Martin with his replacement Loic Serra not arriving from Mercedes until October.
Reports over this summer indicated that Ferrari engineers regard those ‘lost’ three months of 2024 – when Vasseur himself served as interim technical director (!) – as a key contributing factor behind the team’s underwhelming 2025.
It is inevitable that a new regime will bring new ideas, yet surely last winter was the time for Ferrari, having fallen just 14 points short of a first constructors’ title since 2008, to stick rather than twist.
Ferrari’s experiences of 2024 – when a mid-season upgrade reawakened the porpoising phenomenon, resulting in a wasted run of races over the summer months and effectively costing the team the championship – was a flashing warning of the volatility of the ground-effect rules and a reminder that even the smallest changes can backfire spectacularly.
What looks hugely promising in the wind tunnel in this era (Mercedes’ zero-pod concept, anyone?) can often backfire spectacularly out on the track.
As noted in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the great irony of Hamilton’s first season with Ferrari is that he found himself confronted with the exact same problem – a badly born, fundamentally flawed car with its main weakness baked in – he encountered in his closing years at Mercedes.
By shooting for the moon in 2025, Ferrari only succeeded in crashing back down to earth with a bump.
The contrasting fortunes of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton
Memo to Ferrari: Give Charles Leclerc a title-winning car – he’s ready
Why Lewis Hamilton’s documents are a red flag for Ferrari
As Leclerc took consecutive podiums in Austin and Mexico towards the end of the year, there grew a perception that Ferrari had somehow salvaged something from this season.
Ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix, however, Leclerc rejected the suggestion that his recent results had papered over the cracks.
“It’s not good enough,” he said.
“I think, when you drive for such a team, the only thing that is good enough is to win.
“But it’s also true to say that we are against very, very strong competition, and also teams that have a lot of history in the sport and that are very special in their own way.
“So it’s not easy.
“But I think, as Ferrari, when you work for such an incredible brand, it’s not good enough and you’ve got to target winning.”
As if to prove Leclerc’s point, then came a weekend from hell at Interlagos.
Then came four consecutive Q1 eliminations to conclude Hamilton’s first season in red.
Then came a vicious spin at high speed for Leclerc in Qatar.
No, there was nothing salvageable about this season. No redeeming features of this car.
All Ferrari was left with in 2025, in fact, were very occasional flashes.
Flashes of how different this year might have been; flashes of what it could have won.
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