Ferrari struggling with balance: what’s going wrong with the SF-25 in Miami

Ferrari struggles to make sense of Miami performance. That’s a bit the impression that the Italian side had during the qualifying session for the usual Sunday race. A car that is very hard to understand, and by now, adjectives abound. The poor showing is evident: twelfth place for Lewis Hamilton, not even able to get into Q3, and only eighth for Charles Leclerc, who delivered a personally excellent performance that was, however, far from enough to cover the many flaws of a poor car.

Ferrari can’t manage the SF-25. A very complicated day, which unfortunately clearly reflects the current state of the SF-25. Hopes had been placed on tyre management, which could have given Ferrari an advantage, as it is in part doing for Mercedes. However, the car appeared a mystery: at times understeering, at other times oversteering. In medium-to-fast corners, there were evident difficulties reaching the apex – a lack of rotation that remains chronic.

On corner exit, there was often oversteer, due to the use of greater steering angle – a natural condition once there is significant understeer. In direction changes, the SF-25 was often unstable. Part of yesterday’s gap is due to handling, but a significant component is also linked to tyre management, which consequently was lacking.

Everyone struggled in this regard, finding little consistency throughout the lap. That’s why, for example, George Russell had very little confidence in the car. In general, Ferrari struggles too much on this type of track, which features various types of corners – not a minor issue. Lowering the car is always a delicate topic they must try to work around during the weekend.

Already on Friday, the setup had been completely changed, and they likely had to return to more extreme solutions, which ultimately are not particularly fruitful. In terms of grip, there are two points where Charles Leclerc loses all his time: braking for turn 1, where they clearly arrive with the front tyres not ready and the entire slow section of the track, where they lose up to 4 tenths.

On the other hand McLaren knows how and can optimise the setup. Watching McLaren’s onboards, you can immediately sense how much more grip they generate over a lap. In the fast sections, they obviously have a downforce advantage that allows them to maximise mid-corner speed, similarly to Red Bull. Two cars that gain through the entire first sector, where high downforce is useful. In terms of handling, it was not even the worst section for Ferrari.

The car struggled much more in the medium-speed and especially slow-speed sections, where it was very unstable. Once again, the optimisation of the fast corners – where they are inherently weaker – worked better. While in the slow, they can’t find grip. Even McLaren had some issues in the technical sections, especially on entry. They recovered everything on traction, and it is precisely on this point that they built their advantage.

A key was also limiting the gap on the straights, where we know Red Bull is very strong. The McLaren MCL39 remains a slower car, but the differences compared to the 6.174-kilometre Jeddah Corniche Circuit were smaller, also thanks to the nature of the straights, which are obviously much shorter.

Mercedes’ performance was instead dictated by tyre usage. George Russell had many more problems than Kimi Antonelli, who did an excellent job managing the compounds – unlike past races where he was losing those 2 tenths to his teammate in cornering phases due to less effective tyre use, lacking the same grip as the Brit.

For both, the biggest problem was undoubtedly the first sector of the American track, where the tyres were often far from their target temperature. During the qualifying session, they tried to adjust the outlap slightly, managing to get the tyres perfect for turn 1, but then in sector 2 they suffered heavily from overheating. George Russell directly complained about this over the radio.