The world of Formula 1 is currently on hold, a forced break to recharge before engines fire up again in the Netherlands at the end of the month for the final stretch of the 2025 season. This pause has given the teams a chance to regroup, reflect on the first half of the year and prepare for the decisive run-in of the championship. For Ferrari, however, the first half of the season has been disappointing, well below expectations (both those tied to the team’s prestige and the optimistic winter predictions), and marked by ongoing technical difficulties. The SF-25 has proven uncompetitive, difficult for the drivers to handle and for the engineers to understand, showing from its earliest kilometres problems with ride height management (which strongly affected performance) and with plank wear. These issues had already appeared during testing but became strikingly evident at the Chinese Grand Prix, where Ferrari suffered a double disqualification for exceeding the maximum permitted wear of the skid block.
Fred Vasseur’s admission
That double disqualification came after the only weekend where the Ferrari had performed at its best, finally showing its true potential: a sign that the SF-25’s speed can only emerge when running very close to the ground. Since then, Ferrari has struggled clearly at almost every circuit, with the most damaging example coming at the last Grand Prix in Hungary, where to avoid another disqualification the engineers raised tyre pressures on Charles Leclerc’s car. This move made the SF-25 practically undriveable and cost Leclerc what had looked like a possible victory for two-thirds of the race. These recurring difficulties led Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur, in a recent interview with Auto Motor und Sport, to admit that the SF-25 is forced to run higher than its rivals in order to avoid a repeat of the problems seen in Shanghai.
Between difficulties and progress
Vasseur explained that McLaren excels in tyre management, especially in hot or wet conditions, while Ferrari’s disqualifications in China disrupted their development plans. He said the team had to keep a safety margin with car ride height, as these machines are extremely sensitive to every millimetre in ground clearance. If full control of the ride height is lost, competitiveness is inevitably compromised. Trying to fix this issue also means losing focus on other areas. In modern Formula 1 cars, everything revolves around aerodynamic stability. According to Vasseur, over the last two years Ferrari has prioritised drivability and predictability over pure downforce, with the main goal being to eliminate downforce fluctuations caused by roll and tilt. He concluded by saying that the most important step forward came at Monza last year.
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