It’s difficult to admit it but Ferrari was quite embarrassing in the first Grand Prix of the 2025 Formula 1 season. It managed to perform even worse than in the qualifying session, which was already terribly disappointing for fans. It is a harsh assessment, but the article couldn’t have started differently considering the result of the Maranello team at the 5.278-kilometre Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit in Melbourne last Sunday. It is just a simple acknowledgment of the facts, especially when we think about last season, when the Prancing Horse finished the championship on par with McLaren and battled for the Constructors title until the final lap of the last race of the season. It is crucial to understand what’s happening, aside from the fact that there is still plenty of time to recover.
So let’s try to analyze Ferrari’s difficulties in Australia. The Maranello team never showed a decent pace. In the first part of the race, with the Intermediate tires, the goal was to activate them and then cruise along. The pace was 2 or 3 seconds slower than the leaders, referring to McLaren and Max Verstappen‘s Red Bull. A bit too much to bear. What is interesting here comes from the team radio messages, when Riccardo Adami and Bryan Bozzi, respectively Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton’s race engineers, repeatedly complimented them on their good pace.
This clearly shows how nothing different was expected from Ferrari at the Albert Park circuit and it not a good sign according to us. The data collected reiterates the difficulties of the Maranello team. It’s only the first race, time is needed, all true. That said, such a start is not a good omen. The team had anticipated it would be tough, but the result is not acceptable. It’s not about the final positions but the gap, the performance deficit per lap compared to the leaders.
Today, we are still talking about a complicated race, within a competitive context that is not easy to judge due to environmental conditions. At least for now, awaiting further findings, it seems that the Italian team has made another car that is not exactly comfortable with the rain. Both Ferrari drivers are quite skilled on a wet track, yet last Sunday they couldn’t take risks. They were asked not to. Activating and maintaining temperature in the Intermediates was truly difficult.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur is not Mattia Binotto. We have discussed this aspect many times. Progressively, under his leadership, the team has abandoned impossible strategies, those that even with dedicated software could not be imagined. Yet, in the Australian Grand Prix, although it was not the worst we have seen from Ferrari in recent years, considering that Monaco 2022 remains an unbeatable milestone, the pit wall decision in the second part of the race is quite debatable.
Leaving the two drivers at the mercy of the rain on Hard tires was not exactly a great idea. We understand that the hope was to gain positions, hoping the downpour would pass quickly. However, risking such a scenario seemed highly inappropriate. This, of course, aside from Charles Leclerc’s spin. A tactic that would make a “good impression” among the many collected by the previous management before Frederic Vasseur arrived.
By the way, the risk of crashing into the barriers at that moment was quite high, considering the grip with the Pirelli Hard tires, cold as ice, on the wet track and with a sudden downpour, was comparable to the slippery fields at water parks, where slipping and falling continuously is part of the game. Lewis Hamilton complained a lot about the issue. Fortunately, both drivers held on.
When things aren’t going well, the need to find a scapegoat becomes apparent. The most significant change Ferrari made for the 2025 Formula 1 season concerns the new front suspension. The SF-25 features a pull-rod layout. From a kinematic perspective, the front end no longer works in compression but in traction. A clear difference in philosophy, but one that offers neither advantages nor disadvantages, mechanically speaking. We know very well why the Maranello team made this choice.
A decision made by the aerodynamic department, led by the excellent Diego Tondi, who, it should be remembered, took charge of the aerodynamic team after the failure of the Spanish floor introduced by Italian aerodynamicist and former Ferrari technical director Enrico Cardile and completely fixed the car. New development paths: that was the target set. Blaming the pull-rod as the sole cause of the car’s poor performance is not correct. A Formula 1 car is a complex system of interactions, where every component matters. In the first round of the 2025 Formula 1 season, nothing worked.
Alongside last Sunday’s poor performance, the confirmations we wrote about prior to the race weekend are coming through. The Maranello team didn’t load the rear thinking about the rain. We did not see any of those wet weather advantages that many expected. The adjustment was meant to optimize the car at this level of downforce, but this move clearly did not succeed. Even the issue regarding the wear of the skid doesn’t hold up, with the car raised and therefore losing something in terms of performance.
The behavior on track didn’t change from the final free practice session to qualifying. Same handling. In conclusion, it should be said that in just a few days we are back on track, this time in China, at the Shanghai International Circuit. A much more demanding race track when it comes to validating the overall performance of Formula 1 cars. Ferrari needs to step up and erase this bad weekend. They can definitely do better, and as far as we know, the Maranello team has no doubts about it, convinced they will succeed. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. They are already at work analyzing the data at Maranello.
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