Between hope and illusion: Ferrari’s paradox in 2025 F1 season. The 2025 Formula 1 season was expected to be balanced,.

The 2025 Formula 1 championship was supposed to be the year of balance. The last before the major regulatory overhaul in 2026, the final season under rules that all teams now know by heart. Traditionally, in these moments, the gaps narrow, philosophies align, projects are refined, and the championship comes alive in a compact, unpredictable battle. But this time, that hasn’t happened.

After the Spanish Grand Prix, the standings tell a different story: at the top, alone and shining, stands McLaren. 362 points, a clear and flawless supremacy. A team that has found its center: technical coherence, internal harmony, two drivers in a state of grace, and a car that seems to fit every track like a tailor-made glove. It’s a world built on order, balance, clarity. A white world.

Then there’s the rest. Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes, Aston Martin: a parallel universe where the same rules generate chaos, instability, confusion. It’s a grid where updates chase each other and crises multiply. Each team fights its own battle – internal, technical, identity-driven – but none find a clear direction. It’s a world in disarray. A black world.

The contrast isn’t just in the results. It’s in how the teams operate. McLaren is a single body, breathing in unison. Every decision, every development, every strategy seems part of a greater design. The others, instead, scramble after ever-new problems, temporary solutions, a present slipping away. Red Bull is wearing itself down under internal friction and its reliance on Max. Mercedes keeps reinventing itself without finding peace. Ferrari swings between false hopes and flashes of competitiveness. Meanwhile, Aston Martin, waiting for Adrian Newey, seems to have lost its course.

Ferrari’s second place – 165 points, over 190 behind McLaren – perfectly represents the paradox of this season: there’s no title fight, only an endless pursuit that changes from race to race, without ever truly shifting the overall balance. It’s as if the championship is running on two parallel tracks destined never to meet.

And in this disorder, the numbers betray the feelings: Ferrari fans look at that second place with a mix of surprise and bitterness. Being second like this, without ever giving the impression of being in the fight, leaves a bittersweet taste. It’s not a rebirth, but a void filled by others’ absence. A position that tells more about the struggles of others than a real step forward. Never more than this year has second place truly been the first of the losers.

And so, in the year that should have marked convergence, Formula 1 delivers its opposite: a binary championship, made of black and white. On one side, the perfection of those who found their path. On the other, the disorientation of those trying to survive amid uncertainty. Every weekend shuffles the deck, but the winner remains the same. It’s a single-lane world championship. No battle, no narrative twists.

2026 is just around the corner, but for now, in this 2025, Formula 1 is living through an abnormal moment like never before: a dominance that fails to excite and a chase that never materializes. A story suspended, frozen in two disconnected realities.

Two directions. No meeting point. No grey area. Only black and white.