Ferrari’s ambitions hit by setback in Baku qualifying, but some mistakes were avoidable. Ferrari face an uphill battle in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as Charles Leclerc crashes out in Q3.

Ferrari: certain mistakes can be avoided

Charles Leclerc finished tenth and Lewis Hamilton twelfth after qualifying in Baku. For team principal Frédéric Vasseur, the Ferrari SF-25 went into crisis due to lower-than-expected track temperatures and strong gusts of wind, while Lewis Hamilton admitted he was disappointed with the execution of Q2. Leclerc, on the other hand, hit the wall heavily without even setting a timed lap in Q3, caught out by tyres that were too cold to deliver grip.

“There is definitely a sense of frustration after these qualifying sessions.” With these words, Frédéric Vasseur summed up Ferrari’s Saturday in Azerbaijan. The tenth place for Charles Leclerc, who ended his session in the barriers, and the twelfth place for Lewis Hamilton paint a picture of a very steep uphill battle for Sunday’s race. During this 2025 season, there have already been other weekends when Ferrari found themselves licking their wounds on Saturday evening, knowing they would have to go into the race on the defensive. But in Baku, the circumstances feel different.

Expectations had been high. In the build-up to the weekend, the streets of the Azerbaijani capital were considered one of the more favorable circuits left on the calendar. Free practice results suggested Ferrari could fight for the top three in qualifying and had a much stronger race pace than they had shown in many previous rounds. There was, in other words, a very real hope of a strong Saturday and a podium challenge on Sunday. But the reality of qualifying told a different story, beginning with Hamilton’s elimination in Q2, despite the Briton having been consistently quick both on Friday and on Saturday morning.

“Today the conditions were different,” Fred Vasseur explained when asked about the gap between practice and qualifying. “We had much stronger gusts of wind and lower track temperatures, which made it more difficult to bring the tyres into the correct operating window.”

However, in the case of Lewis Hamilton, other factors also played a role in his exclusion from the top ten. Hamilton went into qualifying with only two sets of medium tyres available, compared to the three sets carried by all the other front-running drivers. It was the medium compound—the yellow-marked tyre—that proved to be the most competitive under the unusual conditions of lower temperatures and strong winds in Baku.

The series of red flags disrupted the session, leaving Hamilton on the soft tyres at the decisive moment when a place in Q3 was on the line. For the seven-time world champion, that was the main reason he failed to advance. “We could have managed everything better,” Lewis Hamilton admitted afterwards. “It’s something we need to learn from for the future. I think all of the drivers in the top ten had three sets of mediums, I only had two. It was quite clear that the medium was the fastest compound today, but when it mattered I didn’t have it available. I would have liked to go for another lap—the time was there—but I didn’t have enough fuel. I’m really disappointed, because I wanted to give the team a strong result. I was convinced I could have finished in the top three.”

For Charles Leclerc, the story was different. The Monegasque driver managed to reach Q3 using two sets of medium tyres, thanks to a strategy that differed from his teammate’s. Paradoxically, a mistake on his first run convinced Leclerc to return to the pits and bolt on a second set. That decision turned out to be crucial, giving him the right tyres at the right time to secure a place in the final part of qualifying.

But then came the crash in Q3, and in this case the reasons were not the same as Hamilton’s. “Charles had good pace and was doing a solid job, but then he ended up in the wall,” Fred Vasseur said. “I believe he was caught out by a gust of wind funneling through the buildings, and in this kind of situation it is easy to make a mistake, especially when conditions change from lap to lap. He was not the only one today.”

Beyond the wind that complicated life for many drivers, there were also other factors behind Charles Leclerc’s accident. With the drop in track temperatures, Ferrari lost a significant amount of performance. Leclerc immediately complained of a major loss of grip, which made the SF-25 very difficult to handle at the limit.

The responsibility for the accident is ultimately his, but the circumstances he faced were not what had been expected. The sharp decrease in track temperature during Q3 complicated the warm-up phase for the medium tyres. “I pushed too much in that corner and I simply did not have enough grip,” Leclerc admitted. “So I made a mistake. Things just did not go our way today.”

Now the situation is extremely challenging. Starting from the fifth and sixth rows on a track like Baku is not a definitive sentence, but it does bring plenty of risks, starting from the notoriously chaotic opening lap. The six red flags seen in qualifying are a reminder that nothing can be taken for granted in Azerbaijan. History has shown that this race is full of surprises. However, Ferrari have put themselves in a position where it is very difficult to be optimistic if the goal is still to target that long-awaited podium, which has been missing since the Belgian Grand Prix.