Vasseur: Ferrari needs to address its limitations with the SF25

On the back of Ferrari's most difficult weekend so far in 2025, the Scuderia's team boss Fred Vasseur has urged the Maranello-based outfit to address the limitations with its F1 car.

Ferrari appeared to have lacked speed over the Miami Grand Prix weekend, having struggled for one-lap pace in qualifying. Although their race pace looked better, it was still not enough to compete for top positions.

Having only qualified 12th in the main qualifying, Lewis Hamilton started on the hard tyre. Although the Briton appeared to have reasonable race pace, he spent the opening stages of the race behind the Haas of Esteban Ocon, losing the connection to the front of the field.

The seven-time F1 champion managed to overtake the Frenchman after an intense fight, and he could then capitalize on the virtual safety car interruption which allowed him to gain around eight second compared to a standard pit visit.

His team-mate Charles Leclerc started on the mediums, and was stuck behind the Williams of Carlos Sainz and Alexander Albon during the opening stint. He also wanted to make use of the virtual safety car to complete a cheap pit stop, but the lights went green when he entered the pit lane of the Miami International Autodrome.

After the pit stops, Leclerc overtook his former team-mate Sainz, but he found Hamilton right behind himself. The Briton asked to be let past, given he was on the faster mediums at the point, and Ferrari allowed it after hesitating for three laps. As Hamilton could not motor on, Leclerc was allowed to retake the position with the Scuderia ending the first of three US races in a distant P7 and P9.

On the back of Ferrari's most difficult weekend so far in 2025, the Scuderia's team boss Fred Vasseur has urged the Maranello-based outfit to address the limitations with its F1 car.

"We didn’t quite get the balance right this weekend, particularly yesterday in qualifying and then today we struggled in the middle of the group with little chance to secure a better result than this. When we were in free air, we were close to Mercedes and Red Bull in terms of pace.

"After a race like this there’s obviously a sense of frustration, but we need to stay focused and keep working hard in order to address the issues, dealing with our limitations step by step.

Asked about Ferrari's strategy and intra-team battle, the Frenchman noted: "On the strategy front, our calls were right: we pitted both our drivers under the Virtual Safety Car and this allowed Lewis to run behind Charles at the restart.

"Then we swapped the cars as soon as we were sure we were not putting Charles at risk from the cars behind, as Lewis was on Medium tyres and we wanted to try and catch Kimi Antonelli. It didn’t work so we reversed the call at the end as per our standard procedure."