Leclerc struggles to find answers for Ferrari’s disappointing season in 2025
Ferrari suffered a tough weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix two weeks ago. The Scuderia put in a dominant performance on the opening day of the Baku weekend, with Lewis Hamilton having set the benchmark on Friday ahead of his team-mate Charles Leclerc.
However, conditions changed massively for Saturday and so changed Ferrari’s form. Hamilton was not even able to progress into the final qualifying segment after a strategic error from Ferrari while Leclerc suffered a crash on his first hot lap in Q3.
The Monegasque and the Briton had a great start, moving up the order by a few places, but they were unable to climb any higher than P8 and P9 on a track which usually favoured Ferrari’s cars in recent seasons.
After the last two rounds at Monza and Baku where teams ran an extremely low-downforce setup, the Marina Bay Circuit will prompt the F1 field revert to a high-downforce aerodynamic configuration.
Ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was asked why Ferrari has endured a disappointing season so far in 2025 after it came close to win the Constructors’ title last year.
Asked whether Ferrari’s tough season made him feel disappointment and frustration, the eight-time Grand Prix winner admitted that the entire team was left disappointed with the difficult campaign.
„We are all disappointed as a team, and especially with Ferrari you are always targeting to be back on top and not to fight for second, third, or fourth place in the Constructors’.
„That’s not what we want. We are not happy, and we’ve got to do better. That’s very clear for every member of the team. Honestly, if I knew exactly the area where we are lacking, it would be easy work.”
Leclerc continued: „It’s not as easy as that but what I can say is that Mercedes, Red Bull, and ourselves kind of did the same step from last year to this year, but there’s one team that found something special, and that is McLaren.
„Now it’s up to us to understand what they’ve done so special in order to close that gap. I think Red Bull probably found part of the solution—we could see that in the last few races.
„Mercedes and ourselves didn’t yet, and we are working towards that. We know the areas; how we achieve that is another story, and there’s a lot of work to understand and find the solutions. McLaren did a step that nobody else did,” concluded Leclerc.
