Ferrari arrives in Singapore, one of the four Grands Prix that Charles Leclerc specifically identified as realistic opportunities to aim for a race victory, with the team still searching for its very first win of the 2025 Formula 1 season. Certain characteristics of the Marina Bay circuit could help reduce the compromises that the SF-25 has faced throughout the year, but in order to truly light up the iconic night race under the dazzling city lights, the SF-25 will need to excel in precisely the areas that have caused it the most difficulty during the entirety of the season. This means that Ferrari’s engineers and drivers will have to extract every ounce of performance from the car in corners and conditions where it has previously struggled the most.
Monza, Baku, Singapore, and Las Vegas were the four circuits circled in bright red on the 2025 calendar by Charles Leclerc as the most concrete and realistic opportunities to end Ferrari’s winless streak and claim the first triumph of the season. As things currently stand, however, the results remain frustratingly bitter, as Ferrari is the only top-tier team in the 2025 grid that has not yet secured a victory. Despite the hopes and expectations placed on the last two Grands Prix, this unfortunate statistic has remained unchanged, underscoring the structural challenges faced by the Italian team.
Both the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and the Azerbaijani Grand Prix at Baku, despite being circuits with very different characteristics and demands, clearly highlighted the SF-25’s chronic lack of aerodynamic downforce. This deficiency has consistently forced Ferrari to pursue more extreme setup solutions in an attempt to maximize performance, a strategy that is inherently risky. The problem is that whenever Ferrari attempts to take such an approach, there is always at least one rival driver or team capable of pushing even further—and, perhaps more importantly, making these extreme solutions actually work on the track.
One of the key limitations of the SF-25 is that it does not possess a clear, defining strength or performance advantage that allows it to consistently stand out against its rivals. Instead, the car is designed with more balanced characteristics, which enable it to adapt reasonably well across different types of circuits. While this adaptability is advantageous in some respects, it simultaneously limits Ferrari’s peak performance compared to competitors, who can afford to exploit more aggressive strategies thanks to the inherent strengths of their respective cars.
This is precisely why, after the Azerbaijani Grand Prix at Baku, Charles Leclerc openly admitted that winning a Grand Prix from this point until the end of the 2025 season would be extremely challenging. In reality, this scenario is becoming increasingly likely as the season progresses. While a single victory would not fundamentally change the overall trajectory or outcome of the season—given that pre-season expectations for Ferrari were significantly higher—it would nonetheless serve as an important morale boost for the team, reaffirming confidence and providing momentum for the engineers and drivers alike.
The next opportunity identified by Ferrari to pursue this objective is the Singapore Grand Prix, a challenge that is profoundly different from the other three circuits that Charles Leclerc circled earlier in the season. Unlike Monza, Baku, or Las Vegas, which tend to reward raw efficiency and top speed, Singapore is a high-downforce, tight street circuit where pure aerodynamic performance and mechanical grip from the tires are absolutely critical, particularly in the slower corners. This unique combination of demands will also place McLaren, with drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, among the key protagonists, and potentially as the favorite to shine, especially after two Grands Prix in which the team faced significant challenges and struggled to achieve optimal performance.
The extremely high ambient and track temperatures, the careful management of soft compound tires, the elevated aerodynamic downforce required, and the numerous tight corners where precision in both entry and exit is absolutely crucial, are all conditions that have historically highlighted the strengths of the McLaren MCL39. While the Woking-based car tends to perform even better in medium-speed corners, the Marina Bay circuit offers a uniquely favorable context for evaluating car efficiency and balance.
This particular characteristic of the MCL39, combined with its greater gentleness in managing tire degradation over a race distance, prompted team principal Frederic Vasseur to draw an explicit comparison between the Woking car and the Ferrari SF-25. Nevertheless, there remain several key areas in which the MCL39 is clearly more effective, both in terms of aerodynamic performance and mechanical grip, highlighting the competitive challenges Ferrari will face in Singapore.
When Ferrari is forced to compromise its setup, the SF-25 tends to struggle most in slow corners, where understeer manifests precisely at the moments when front-end responsiveness is critically needed. This has been one of the most significant and persistent weaknesses of the Italian car throughout the entirety of the 2025 Formula 1 season. It is a flaw that, in some Grands Prix, can only be partially mitigated when conditions allow the team to reduce compromises and marginally increase aerodynamic downforce.
In this regard, the Marina Bay circuit presents a very different challenge compared to Baku. In Azerbaijan, aside from the low overall aerodynamic load, there are many sections where drivers brake with the car almost fully straight, before navigating a 90-degree corner. Unsurprisingly, in the few corners requiring a more aggressive turn-in, such as the final corner of the Baku circuit, the SF-25 clearly exposed its limitations, losing noticeable time both in cornering speed and on exit.
This is the first major challenge that Ferrari will need to overcome at the Singapore Grand Prix. While it is true that the Marina Bay circuit features a series of relatively tight medium- and low-speed corners, in several braking zones the car cannot remain fully straight. Drivers must rotate the car slightly under braking before pushing on entry, a maneuver that requires both precision and confidence. It is precisely in these types of combined braking and turn-in scenarios that the SF-25 has historically struggled, making it one of the critical areas Ferrari must address to maximize performance in Singapore.
Much like in Monaco, there are some factors that could play in Ferrari’s favor. The track predominantly consists of medium- and low-speed corners, which reduces the compromises required when fine-tuning the setup. Additionally, the ability to run slightly higher aerodynamic wing loads can partially compensate for the downforce deficit generated by the car’s underbody, especially considering that, as a street circuit, most teams are forced to run their cars with a slightly elevated ride height. These factors provide Ferrari with a modest confidence boost, but meticulous and precise setup work will still be essential if the team hopes to overcome the SF-25’s chronic performance limitations.
Another critical element that cannot be ignored is qualifying. One of the most evident weaknesses of the 2025 Ferrari SF-25 remains its single-lap pace, where the car rarely manages to operate within the ideal window to fully exploit the tires’ potential. While the car tends to perform better over race distances, a poor starting position in qualifying can hide any advantage, in part because the SF-25 is unable to replicate the development and improvements achieved by its rivals throughout a Grand Prix weekend.
Examining the data and taking the top-performing drivers of each leading team as a reference point—Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris for McLaren, Max Verstappen for Red Bull, George Russell and Kimi Antonelli for Mercedes, and Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton for Ferrari—it becomes evident that Charles Leclerc often starts from a relatively rearward position compared to his rivals. He is also the driver who gains the least improvement from Q2 to Q3, confirming Ferrari’s ongoing struggle to extract the final tenths of a second when it matters most in the decisive final qualifying session. This issue will be even more critical at Singapore, where overtaking rivals on track is notoriously challenging, making grid position a decisive factor in race strategy.
Much of the outcome in Singapore will depend on the balance between having tires fully up to temperature at the start of a flying lap and managing heat buildup for the remainder of the lap, in addition to extracting the very last tenths of a second precisely when it is needed in Q3. In this context, rather than immediately aiming to challenge for the lead, Ferrari’s priority must be to recover, execute a clean and error-free weekend, and secure valuable points in the Constructors’ Championship. In recent Grands Prix, the team has fallen short not only in terms of raw performance but also in execution—arguably one of the areas where Ferrari had historically excelled, and one of the few aspects in which the team had consistently inspired confidence during an otherwise challenging and largely joyless 2025 season.
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