2025 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[deadhead]

100% matter of perspective and most importantly the statements from the team at the beginning of the season, which was we will be fighting for both championships, so coming from that being a distant second (if that) is indeed a complete disaster.

If the goal of this team is to have a few podiums, maybe a win, and finish second in the championship, then this season is an enormous success!

So which is it? Maybe don’t state that your goal is fighting for both championships in the beginning of the season…

[Seanspeed]

100% matter of perspective and most importantly the statements from the team at the beginning of the season, which was we will be fighting for both championships, so coming from that being a distant second (if that) is indeed a complete disaster.

If the goal of this team is to have a few podiums, maybe a win, and finish second in the championship, then this season is an enormous success!

So which is it? Maybe don’t state that your goal is fighting for both championships in the beginning of the season…

They never said they would be competing for both championships, just that this was the aim. Which is just a typical 'no duh' statement. No doubt Mercedes and Red Bull also had the same aims.

I think the concerning part of this season isn't that they are second place. Because overhauling Mclaren was always going to be very difficult, and certainly with the gains Mclaren made over the winter, it seems pretty clear that Ferrari would have needed a monumental level of improvement to simply catch Mclaren, much less beat them. They still tried and that was the goal, but it's no 'disastrous failure' that they didn't do it. F1 is hard.

The concerning part is that they built a car with all-new fundamental problems that they didn't really understand and haven't been able to properly deal with even about two thirds of the way through the season. A lot of the hope coming from last season was because Ferrari made real progress by the end of 2024, showing they could get on top of technical issues, even if there was still some fundamental weaknesses. This year they have not really shown that. Maybe the car is a bit better now, but everytime they seem to start feeling better about things, some issue shows its ugly head again and drags them back down. It just doesn't fill people with a lot of hope for the future.

(though really, Ferrari have done quite well with the last two regulation changes, so who knows...)

[Sphere3758]

100% matter of perspective and most importantly the statements from the team at the beginning of the season, which was we will be fighting for both championships, so coming from that being a distant second (if that) is indeed a complete disaster.

If the goal of this team is to have a few podiums, maybe a win, and finish second in the championship, then this season is an enormous success!

So which is it? Maybe don’t state that your goal is fighting for both championships in the beginning of the season…

They never said they would be competing for both championships, just that this was the aim. Which is just a typical 'no duh' statement. No doubt Mercedes and Red Bull also had the same aims.

I think the concerning part of this season isn't that they are second place. Because overhauling Mclaren was always going to be very difficult, and certainly with the gains Mclaren made over the winter, it seems pretty clear that Ferrari would have needed a monumental level of improvement to simply catch Mclaren, much less beat them. They still tried and that was the goal, but it's no 'disastrous failure' that they didn't do it. F1 is hard.

The concerning part is that they built a car with all-new fundamental problems that they didn't really understand and haven't been able to properly deal with even about two thirds of the way through the season. A lot of the hope coming from last season was because Ferrari made real progress by the end of 2024, showing they could get on top of technical issues, even if there was still some fundamental weaknesses. This year they have not really shown that. Maybe the car is a bit better now, but everytime they seem to start feeling better about things, some issue shows its ugly head again and drags them back down. It just doesn't fill people with a lot of hope for the future.

(though really, Ferrari have done quite well with the last two regulation changes, so who knows...)

Just on the first point: Immediately after the car launch, Charles stated the "he would be disappointed if they did not win at least one of the two championships". He also wrote "This year i will be world champion" in one of the pre season activities they do every year. Not something he does every year.

The team clearly had massive ambitions at the start of this year. The fact that they havent had a proper race win till now essentially makes this a disaster, by their own standards

[Seanspeed]

Just on the first point: Immediately after the car launch, Charles stated the "he would be disappointed if they did not win at least one of the two championships". He also wrote "This year i will be world champion" in one of the pre season activities they do every year. Not something he does every year.

The team clearly had massive ambitions at the start of this year. The fact that they havent had a proper race win till now essentially makes this a disaster, by their own standards

Saying he'd be disappointed if they didn't win a title is another basic 'no duh' statement. Means nothing.

And please find me where he said that he would be world champion this year. That doesn't sound like Charles at all. He's always been an optimist, but only to a reasonable, pragmatic degree. Certainly, I think if he ever said that he would be champion, that would have been picked up on by racing news quite hard, and I genuinely never saw this at all. He's never been one to act arrogant like that. Quite the opposite.

It's annoying to have to litigate arguments like these when people are trying to push extreme statements like this season being a 'disaster' when nobody can accept there's some in-between reality where things simply haven't gone as well as hoped, but when we're in 2nd in the WCC, it feels awfully ridiculous to claim that a season is a 'disaster'.

[Sphere3758]

Just on the first point: Immediately after the car launch, Charles stated the "he would be disappointed if they did not win at least one of the two championships". He also wrote "This year i will be world champion" in one of the pre season activities they do every year. Not something he does every year.

The team clearly had massive ambitions at the start of this year. The fact that they havent had a proper race win till now essentially makes this a disaster, by their own standards

Saying he'd be disappointed if they didn't win a title is another basic 'no duh' statement. Means nothing.

And please find me where he said that he would be world champion this year. That doesn't sound like Charles at all. He's always been an optimist, but only to a reasonable, pragmatic degree. Certainly, I think if he ever said that he would be champion, that would have been picked up on by racing news quite hard, and I genuinely never saw this at all. He's never been one to act arrogant like that. Quite the opposite.

It's annoying to have to litigate arguments like these when people are trying to push extreme statements like this season being a 'disaster' when nobody can accept there's some in-between reality where things simply haven't gone as well as hoped, but when we're in 2nd in the WCC, it feels awfully ridiculous to claim that a season is a 'disaster'.

https://share.google/e0Zhm6vFBpboFNzho

[deadhead]

“We want to fight for both championships, as we know we have two drivers who can do it, and the mood in the team is very positive.”

This was reported on March 1, 2025, ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with Vasseur highlighting the potential of Ferrari’s new driver pairing, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.


Ok so maybe he was just talking about the drivers but he knows how this sport works:

no WDC/WCC capable car = no WDC/WCC no matter who your drivers are.

[Seanspeed]

Just on the first point: Immediately after the car launch, Charles stated the "he would be disappointed if they did not win at least one of the two championships". He also wrote "This year i will be world champion" in one of the pre season activities they do every year. Not something he does every year.

The team clearly had massive ambitions at the start of this year. The fact that they havent had a proper race win till now essentially makes this a disaster, by their own standards

Saying he'd be disappointed if they didn't win a title is another basic 'no duh' statement. Means nothing.

And please find me where he said that he would be world champion this year. That doesn't sound like Charles at all. He's always been an optimist, but only to a reasonable, pragmatic degree. Certainly, I think if he ever said that he would be champion, that would have been picked up on by racing news quite hard, and I genuinely never saw this at all. He's never been one to act arrogant like that. Quite the opposite.

It's annoying to have to litigate arguments like these when people are trying to push extreme statements like this season being a 'disaster' when nobody can accept there's some in-between reality where things simply haven't gone as well as hoped, but when we're in 2nd in the WCC, it feels awfully ridiculous to claim that a season is a 'disaster'.

https://share.google/e0Zhm6vFBpboFNzho

I'm gonna have to admit I'm wrong here, while also having to obviously describe that such a demonstration was not super serious and that this was just some casual little thing that had nothing to do with his actual experience with the car itself.

Acting like this is proof that Ferrari or Leclerc at any point had full belief they'd win the title is nonsense.

[Emag]

I think it is pretty obvious this team had high expectations for the season, both internally and externally. Claiming otherwise is just wrong. Saying 'oh but it was only their target, they never said they would definitely win' is nothing but technicality twisting to make it sound like something else. The reality is they fully expected to be in a serious fight for both titles this year. Every statement from the end of 2024, through the winter development period, pre-season testing and even after testing, pointed to the same goal. And considering how 2024 ended, they had no real reason to think otherwise.

The thing is, having ambitions for titles is not some unique 2025 situation. Ferrari openly set the goal of winning at least one championship almost every year.

If Leclerc was already making statements like: <Leclerc says he ‘has the speed’ for 2020 title bid> in 2020 of all seasons, that just shows how hungry Ferrari always are to win. After Barcelona testing they genuinely believed the car would not be as much of a disaster as it turned out to be, if you look back at those articles. In any case, the track always slaps teams back to reality. And this season in particular, it is brutal that the car once again came with a fundamental flaw that took far too long to fix, if it has even been fixed at all.

Is it a disaster season? No, not really, Ferrari has had far worse recently in the form 2020 (and I would argue 2023 as well). This year McLaren has pretty much won everything. It's not like the other teams are in a fierce fight and Ferrari are missing out.

Is it a disappointing season though? Absolutely, it is. And I think that's fairly obvious from the general attitude from team personnel and their statements. They did not expect to be in the position they found themselves in.

[Xyz22]

I think 2023 was a massive failure by Ferrari too. As far as I remember, they tried some extreme fix for the 2022 car’s weaknesses and ended up creating something that was draggy, hard to set up and still not kind on the tyres. The SF23, in hindsight, looks like a confused design direction. It's not a clear evolution of the F1-75 and it is also not really a step toward what became the SF24.

A lackluster car which had a narrow operating window and obviously never really offered a strong development path considering it was scrapped. It was only the second year of the new regulations and I guess Ferrari were set on doing things their own way, since back then there was no obvious “superior” solution. Flash forward to 2025 and pretty much all cars have converged sidepod-wise, so there is definitely a correct way of doing things in this regulation cycle and Red Bull managed to crack it right from the start. With hindsight, of course it would have been better for Ferrari to have gone the SF24 route with the SF23. But you have to consider their position at the time. They were taking risks, because they wanted to beat RedBull. Unfortunately, didn't work out.

The SF 23 was a colossal disaster. Awful car.

A "colossal disaster" of a car which managed 9 podiums, 1 win, and finished 3rd in the WCC (3 points behind the 2nd place team).

Goes to show that expectations are everything when it comes to forming subjective opinions about the team's success (or lack thereof).

Ferrari's 2023 performance - while perhaps disappointing in the sense they fell short of their goals of competing for a WDC and WCC - did not constitute a "colossal disaster". Yet, we still get such comments, since expectation very much colors perception. Everything is relative, I suppose.

Of course everything is relative, especially in Formula 1.
The SF 23 was slower then the F175 in some areas. Moreover, Mclaren from Silverstone was already significant quicker in "real tracks" (i.e. tracks that have corners when you need to rely on the tyres and not just 90 degrees corners). The SF 23 was also built on a completely flawed concept which was completely scrapped with the SF 24, the proof behind its complete failure.

[deadhead]

This is a much better approach

Vasseur: "2026 will be exciting".

He is learning

[AR3-GP]

"At the beginning of the season, we had a lot of problems with the handling at the racetrack. There were quality problems, then the disqualifications. We lost the thread a bit," admits Frederic Vasseur in an interview with auto motor und sport.

Especially the second race of the season in Shanghai, which had started positively with Hamilton's sprint victory, was a turning point in a negative way, the team boss reveals. After the main race on Sunday, both drivers were disqualified there.

Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc had actually finished fifth and sixth. However, the Monegasque was taken out of the classification because his car was too light, and the record world champion's underbody was too worn after the Grand Prix.



Team boss Vasseur explains: "The disqualifications threw us off track a bit. We had to leave ourselves a margin of safety in terms of ground clearance. As we all know, these vehicles are extremely sensitive in terms of ground clearance."

Vasseur is suggesting that Ferrari had to set the SF-25 a little higher in the races to China to avoid further disqualifications. But with the ground-effect cars of the current generation, such a step costs performance.

"Every millimetre is a position on the grid," explains the team boss, adding: "If you don't have full control over the height of the car, it affects the competitiveness of the car."

"To solve the problem, you lose focus on other things," he also emphasizes. After all, Leclerc was only on the podium for the first time this year at the fifth race of the season in Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, he can be seen there more often again.

"In the last three or four weekends, we were able to close the gap [to McLaren] to two tenths," Vasseur stresses. However, the world championship train has long since left for the Scuderia with 260 points at the summer break.

https://www.motorsport-total.com/forum/ ... hp?t=98330

[deadhead]

"Every millimetre is a position on the grid," explains the team boss, adding: "If you don't have full control over the height of the car, it affects the competitiveness of the car."

I wonder if they just realized this little detail in the last year of the current regulations

[WardenOfTheNorth]

"Every millimetre is a position on the grid," explains the team boss, adding: "If you don't have full control over the height of the car, it affects the competitiveness of the car."

I wonder if they just realized this little detail in the last year of the current regulations

I am certain that they have known this from the start.

[LM10]

"Every millimetre is a position on the grid," explains the team boss, adding: "If you don't have full control over the height of the car, it affects the competitiveness of the car."

I wonder if they just realized this little detail in the last year of the current regulations

You could have saved Ferrari from building colossal disasters if you had called them and told them this little detail.

To everyone in this thread full of utterly competent people: Please don’t withhold such important information from Ferrari.

[Seanspeed]

I think it is pretty obvious this team had high expectations for the season, both internally and externally. Claiming otherwise is just wrong. Saying 'oh but it was only their target, they never said they would definitely win' is nothing but technicality twisting to make it sound like something else.

It's not twisting anything. There's HOPE and there's actual reality. Of course they were aiming high. They very much wanted and hoped to be fighting for the title, but the idea that they 100% expected that they totally would is nonsense. There had been many more realistic comments talking about the very high challenge this would entail. They aren't idiots. They are FAR smarter and more informed about their actual chances than anybody here. They knew full well that overhauling Mclaren was a very tall ask. And nothing they've ever said has ever suggested otherwise.

The only people twisting things are those trying to suggest that Ferrari ever said that they would compete with or beat Mclaren.