The Constructors’ standings do not fully reflect this. With McLaren celebrating their 10th Constructors’ title, they are only 10 points behind Ferrari. The Singapore GP results, however, paint a clearer picture: Mercedes, Red Bull, and McLaren finished with five of their six drivers ahead of the Ferraris. Only Yuki Tsunoda failed to do so.
On a circuit where Ferrari should have been competing for victory, the team was outperformed by all its main rivals. Frédéric Vasseur spoke to Sky Sport F1 after the race to assess the situation.
According to the French manager, the core issue of Ferrari’s weekend was the inability to fully exploit the SF-25’s true potential. On-track operations, driver actions, and other factors prevented the cars from performing at their peak during the critical moments of the weekend.
“The problems started before qualifying,” Fred Vasseur said. “We arrived in Singapore with good pace in Free Practice 1, but we lost it due to execution on track. We were not able to extract the best from the car and the drivers.”
Poor qualifying then compounded the issues during the race. Both SF-25s suffered from significant brake overheating, forcing Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton to lift off the throttle to manage the situation and finish in the points. The sixth and seventh-place finishes perfectly reflect Ferrari’s weekend.
“In qualifying we were the fastest in Q1, but then we posted the same time in Q3. Today, the main problem was that we started too far back, in the middle of the pack, and struggled to manage the brakes. Not from the first lap, but from lap three until the end,” Fred Vasseur explained.
“When we pushed a little more with Hamilton, the pace was very good. In fact, more than good. But the problem is that we could only push for about 1% of the race. You cannot achieve good results that way.”
Mercedes and Red Bull were able to exploit the potential of their cars, which have continued evolving, while McLaren has already halted development of the MCL39 to focus on 2026. Ferrari, despite having completed its development, is still unable to extract maximum performance. One might wonder if the SF-25’s potential has truly been reached, or if competitors have simply done more and better work.
“We had some potential in the car, and we showed it in the first practice session and Q1, but we were unable to put it all together at the decisive moment of the weekend, like in Q3. We could not fully exploit the track evolution, and today we were too far back. We were forced to chase, and that was the main problem.”
