Fifty-seven seconds behind McLaren, although with a gap slightly influenced by the inability to fully exploit the Virtual Safety Car period during the pit stop—unlike the papaya duo—a seventh and eighth place that satisfies no one, and a few team radios revealing frustration with a car that, even in Miami, proved to be below expectations.
A disappointing result in a weekend that, aside from Lewis Hamilton’s podium in the wet Sprint Race on Saturday (more a result of strategy than pure pace), offered very few joys or satisfactions, as admitted by Ferrari Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur at the end of the race.
Just two weeks ago, the Scuderia celebrated its first podium of the season with Charles Leclerc, albeit again thanks to external circumstances, namely Lando Norris’ mistake in qualifying. However, the result itself and the relatively small gap had still left something of a smile, perhaps helped by a track more suited to the current characteristics of the SF-25.
“McLaren was on another planet today, they were 30 seconds ahead of everyone. Max Verstappen pushed at the beginning to keep up but completely destroyed his tyres. I think our pace was fairly comparable to Mercedes and Red Bull, but McLaren was on another planet,” Fred Vasseur told Sky, underlining how the two papaya cars were, in fact, in a league of their own, putting almost 40 seconds on George Russell.
In Miami, Ferrari particularly struggled in the slow corners, where it was even slower than Haas and Williams on a single lap—a clear sign that there’s still much work to be done to take a solid step forward.
Exploits alone—not that there have been many this season—are not enough; above all, there’s a lack of consistent performance to fight Red Bull and Mercedes at every round. Starting from behind, as happened today, certainly doesn’t help, because there’s always the risk of ending up in dirty air and damaging the tyres even more.
Ferrari knows that qualifying is the first area to improve if they aim to take a real step forward in the next races. Nonetheless, despite the underwhelming showing in Miami, Fred Vasseur is convinced the SF-25 still has untapped potential.
“Certainly,” replied the Team Principal when asked if there’s still room to unlock.
“I don’t feel like we found the best possible balance throughout the weekend, and yesterday we struggled again on new tyres. For the first time in two years, we did our best lap on used tyres, and that creates some frustration. In the end, we have to work on fixing problems, one at a time, to get stronger. But it’s pretty obvious we were very far from McLaren today.”
New developments will arrive in Imola, although it won’t be a major package capable of turning the SF-25’s performance around. Fred Vasseur is still convinced that, while helpful, updates aren’t the only key: there’s still potential to be unlocked in the base package, especially regarding tyre feel, which has often been lacking.
“I think it’s not a matter of updates, but of finding the best compromise with this car. Certainly, we have a small step coming for Imola, then another for Barcelona, but the most important thing is putting everything together.”
“Going back to this weekend, I think it was more a matter of tyre management and how to exploit them best, rather than pure car characteristics. In some weekends, in certain stints, we managed to extract much more from the tyres than we did here. And that’s where performance comes from.”
Finally, Fred Vasseur also commented on what happened between the two drivers, particularly regarding the decision to swap positions—perhaps too late—considering that at that moment Lewis Hamilton seemed to have better pace than Charles Leclerc. When the Briton couldn’t pull away, the team decided to swap them back, as Leclerc then appeared better able to take advantage of the hard tyre’s long-run versatility.
“I think it was the right decision. Lewis had a softer tyre than Charles. We made the position swap to try and catch Antonelli, following our internal rulebook. Then, once we saw he couldn’t manage it, we swapped them back. It’s never easy to ask drivers to give up position, but in the end, they obeyed and did it. We were the only team to do that today, but it was a good decision, as it was the only chance to catch Antonelli at that point.” – the French manager pointed out.
