Ferrari admits major compromises on the 2025 car and now fears the pressure building for 2026
Ferrari has openly acknowledged that it stopped developing the SF-25 a long time ago, but the team now knows it cannot afford to make mistakes with the 2026 project. In less than a week, the SF-25 will officially become a difficult memory for supporters of the Scuderia. The ground-effect era is ending without delivering the results Ferrari hoped for, especially with the team still unable to return to winning ways. After the recent statements concerning the early abandonment of the current project, all eyes have shifted to 2026, and the margin for error has vanished.
The 2025 season was supposed to be Maranello’s final chance to prove it had truly re-established itself at the top of Formula 1. The second half of the 2024 championship had created the expectation of a strong 2025 campaign, especially after Ferrari came close to winning the Constructors’ Championship and secured the signing of Lewis Hamilton.
Instead, the season now drawing to a close will go down as one of the most disappointing of recent years for the Prancing Horse. After weeks of hints and mixed statements, Frédéric Vasseur and both drivers eventually aligned on one blunt truth: Ferrari stopped focusing on the SF-25 as early as April.
On the one hand, this admission partly explains why Ferrari has lacked performance compared to its main rivals. On the other hand, it dramatically increases the expectations surrounding the 2026 car. This is also the view of journalist Stefano Nicoli, who addressed Ferrari’s uncomfortable situation for next year during the podcast Terruzziracconta.
“The discussion about development updates — stopping them this year and saying ‘we shifted our focus to the 2026 car’ — makes sense only up to a point,” Stefano Nicoli said. “It can work as a partial explanation for this season, but it enormously increases the expectations for next year.”
Nicoli added that “Qatar was a complete disaster across the board for Ferrari, for reasons that in my opinion not even they managed to fully understand. On top of that, Lewis Hamilton started from the pit lane in the Sprint, trying to fix the issues they had in qualifying, and in the end he admitted that they made the car even worse.”
The comments were reinforced by Giorgio Terruzzi, who underlined just how disappointing this 2025 campaign has become for the Scuderia. “Let’s remember: in 2022 we were second in the Constructors’ Championship, and Charles Leclerc finished second under Mattia Binotto’s management. Today Leclerc is fifth, and Ferrari is now definitively fourth in the 2025 standings,” he concluded.
Both journalists highlighted Ferrari’s numerous issues this year and the enormous expectations — perhaps unintentionally created — for the 2026 Formula 1 project. The team now finds itself under pressure to deliver a competitive car that can end years of frustration and finally return to fighting for victories.
The Abu Dhabi finale this weekend will be the last chance to salvage some pride in 2025, but the real judgment on this Ferrari era begins when the covers come off the 2026 challenger in January.
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