The Ferrari team principal reviews the freshly concluded 2025 Formula 1 season and explains what, in his view, went wrong over the course of the year.
Zero victories in Sunday races, podiums achieved only thanks to Charles Leclerc, and a single Sprint win in China from Lewis Hamilton that ultimately proved to be just a brief bright moment. Ferrari’s 2025 season turned out to be disappointing, especially after the confident statements made in Milan before travelling to Australia for the opening round.
The 24-race campaign often felt like a long, exhausting ordeal, a kind of personal Via Crucis filled with complicated weekends in which the Scuderia never managed to find the long-awaited turning point following a very difficult start to the year.
Once the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – the final round of the 2025 Formula 1 season – had ended, Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur summed up the team’s performance.
“Honestly, it’s difficult. The season was tough overall, but you have to separate the weekend performances, the performance over the full season and the long-term development of the team.”
“Honestly, the season was difficult, but from day one in Bahrain it was clear that the pace was not exceptional. And then the start of the season was very hard for us with the disqualification in China, I think it was the second race, probably, yes. You lose 25 points, you give away another six points to your direct rivals and you start the season already on the back foot. After three or four races, McLaren was probably already 100 points ahead. When your goal is to win or at least have a season comparable to last year’s, you are immediately at a disadvantage.”
According to Fred Vasseur, Ferrari still managed to produce a solid recovery as the season progressed. The team held second place in the Constructors’ Championship until a few rounds from the end, before being overtaken by both Mercedes and Red Bull. For the Frenchman, what Ferrari lacked the most was attention to detail in an extremely competitive Formula 1 field where gaps were incredibly small.
“But we are a team made up of competitive people; we want good results, we want to win races. A couple of times this season we had a very strong comeback. We had one after the summer break, the pace was improving. Austin, Mexico, that whole sequence, and I think Azerbaijan went well too. But we struggled a lot with the details, because at the end of the day… what we have to keep in mind is that today, in F1, yesterday in Q1, you went from sixth to 16th by less than one tenth. Just one small mistake or not being in the right window and you’re out in Q1 – and the following weekend you’re sixth or seventh.”
“I think only McLaren and Max at the end of the season had that small advantage that allowed them to handle a small issue. But for everyone else on the grid, you could easily lose positions, and even Max in the summer – he was once 11th in Budapest, and also late in the season in Brazil, if you made a mistake you were out in Q1. This is the reality of F1. Today I think it’s good for the show, it’s good for the sport. Sometimes it’s hard for the teams, but overall I think it’s a positive point for the championship. The truth is that every single weekend you run the risk of being eliminated in Q1.”
“There is a convergence of performance. I was discussing it this morning with one of you. I don’t know if it’s due to wind tunnel allocation, with the teams at the back getting more. It means that there is probably this recovery, and probably next year we will start with an even smaller gap. But this convergence of performance during the season, with greater allocation for the smaller teams, was the aim of F1. And honestly it has been managed very well, because we have never had a season like this, where cars can finish 18th one weekend and then fight for fifth or sixth the next.” – the French manager concluded after the final round of the 2025 Formula 1 championship in Abu Dhabi.
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