Ferrari has set the Spanish GP as the day of resurrection. Later than the Christian one. Charles Leclerc has bet that the team will have little to lose when the FIA, precisely in Barcelona, implements stricter checks on front wing flexibility. All Ferrari fans are hoping for this, but the Maranello technical staff has already granted nine races’ advantage to McLaren and Mercedes, the top teams suspected of gaining the most from the programmed movement of flaps.
The numbers, after all, are very clear: F1 expert Gianluca D’Alessandro, has come up with a chart that explains more than many public statements. Compared to the car that finished second in the 2024 Constructors’ Championship, the SF-25 has improved by 0.857 seconds, using the best lap from the first five GPs as a benchmark. This figure might have been inflated by the new asphalt in China and Japan, but regardless of the absolute value, the gap among the top teams is what’s interesting.
But the eight-tenths improvement may have been deemed sufficient by Loic Serra and company to be contenders in both championships, thus fueling fan expectations—not created by media, but by the team’s own united statements before the season began.
At the end of a regulatory cycle, it’s normal to be scraping the barrel and expect differences to reduce as they approach the asymptote. But ground effect cars are still full of surprises, with performance gains that exceed predictions: it should not surprise, then, that Ferrari ranks only sixth in incremental gains, while McLaren is third with an improvement of 1.359 seconds, trailing only Alpine and Williams, who had poor cars last year and thus showed more dramatic improvements compared to those who were already ahead.
It’s evident that Ferrari struggles in qualifying: there’s a 0.492 second gap from McLaren (based on single-lap pace), and the team suffers in races from constantly running in dirty air. The SF-25 lacks aerodynamic load to set ride heights that don’t risk damaging the floor, as happened to Lewis Hamilton in China, leading to disqualification.
The weak point is the rear, which lacks sufficient downforce, making the car unstable at the back. Hamilton struggles with this twitchy rear end that erodes his confidence, while Leclerc has found a way to adapt his front-focused driving style and often performs miracles beyond the car’s actual limit.
We sincerely hope that the upgrades planned for Imola—part of a package to be completed in Barcelona (with Monte Carlo in between)—will result in real progress.
Why has Ferrari’s comeback clock been set to the Spanish race and not to the European opener in Imola? The upgrades developed in Maranello for the Enzo and Dino Ferrari circuit may not be enough to catch the papaya-colored cars.
Will we really have to wait for the FIA to clip the wings of the competition before Ferrari can breathe the air of the podium’s top steps again? Let’s just hope that, in the meantime, the others haven’t already managed to limit the damage. After all, we’ve already had a regulatory adjustment on rear wings and the performance order didn’t change. We’re counting on a reactive Ferrari already at the GP of Made in Italy and Emilia-Romagna. Why not believe?
