Ferrari is suffering tremendously on a technical level. The start of the 2025 Formula 1 season is bringing many disappointments, which in turn are creating unrest within the Maranello team. Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur has said that updates are important, but even more important is understanding how to make the car work at its best. That is precisely what is missing at Ferrari, which is unable to optimize the performance of the SF-25 single-seater, for better or worse.
The month of May will be very important for the historic Italian team. In fact, it will become clear whether it is worth continuing to push or instead focus exclusively on the next Formula 1 season. The upcoming campaign will see the introduction of the new set of rules and regulations. If the team is able to correct the car and raise its technical understanding to unlock hidden performance, things could change radically.
Otherwise, the smart thing to do would be to accept yet another painful defeat, and instead invest time and money into the 2026 Formula 1 project. In the meantime, we can discuss the Ferrari SF-25 single-seater, based on what we have seen in the first six rounds of the championship. From that, we can hypothesize remedies and measures that the Italian team might decide to take depending on the short-term scenarios.
These days, while waiting for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, which is set to take place next weekend at the 4.909-kilometre Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, there is a lot of talk about a possible new rear suspension for Ferrari. The Maranello team is struggling quite a bit to hit the ride heights established in the design. Failing to use the correct distance to the reference plane ends up disrupting the entire search for the right setup. As a result, the window in which Ferrari can work to fine-tune the SF-25 is greatly narrowed.
On more than one occasion, we have pointed out that the issue with the rear end is not exclusively linked to the stiffness of the suspension geometry, which has been criticized for being too soft and allowing excessive travel. The approach chosen by the Ferrari engineers and technicians allows for a higher degree of squat, a philosophy that the Italian car shares with the 2024 car that nearly won the Formula 1 championship.
Nonetheless, it is also true that this configuration can carry with it less potential when it comes to the stiffer setups used by McLaren and Red Bull, especially now, when Ferrari’s engineers and technicians have yet to get the 2025 car to perform as they want. In fact, the rear does not work well and, in general, there is always some understeer limiting performance. Raising the car narrows the aerodynamic operating window.
Moreover, increasing the ride height leads to a loss of downforce, which in turn causes a lack of rotation. Many shadows hang over an SF-25 single-seater that is not well understood even by its own team. Some work may be done on the rear suspension, such as a different arrangement of the arms or internal elements. That said, at the moment Ferrari is studying whether or not these modifications will be made.
Ferrari is therefore evaluating rear suspension changes. In the Spanish Grand Prix weekend we will see the new front wing, while updates to the rear are unlikely, given the tight timeframe and the difficulty of modifying suspension layouts. It should also be said that the aerodynamic problems of the SF-25 may very well stem from poor aero-mechanical interaction, which is a condition that has been confirmed multiple times by those involved.
Modern Formula 1 cars, which are true “systems,” are highly non-linear and depend on a multitude of different variables. When even one of these components does not work, the whole car suffers a significant drop in performance. What’s more, wing cars are extremely sensitive to ride height changes, which makes finding the right compromise especially difficult.
For this reason too, during the past winter, we ourselves had strong doubts about introducing a new suspension, be it front or rear. In our case, we were talking about the pull-rod at the front, especially on this type of car, where the less you change, the better the result, since you don’t have to deal with a long and complex learning curve to get the car working properly.
As for the rear, all we can do now is wait, keeping in mind that a new rear suspension cannot be seen as a “silver bullet,” especially in a technical scenario where that component is not the only limiting factor. Regardless, changing the rear would open the door to a new learning curve that could be quite long.
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