Keep expectations low. That was the message Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton brought to Barcelona on Thursday, both ready to temper the optimism surrounding Ferrari after a strong but ultimately standalone result in Monaco. There, the Scuderia claimed a second-place finish (its second podium of the season), making the SF-25 look competitive and clearly the second-best car behind McLaren. But both Ferrari drivers spoke cautiously about that race, stressing it was a one-off rather than the start of a comeback after a disappointing start to the season.
Fred Vasseur goes against the grain
This cautious outlook was based on the SF-25’s less-suited characteristics for the Spanish circuit. It was a shared perspective among the drivers, putting them at odds with team principal Frederic Vasseur. After the Monaco Grand Prix, and ahead of the technical directive on front wing flexibility coming into effect this weekend, Fred Vasseur suggested a reset of the competitive order and hinted at a possible turning point for Ferrari. The team thus arrived in Spain with cautious optimism, hoping to finally unlock the car’s potential and leave behind the season’s early failures.
This seemed possible after the first practice session, which, despite unchanged qualifying pecking order, showed promising long-run pace from the SF-25. But those hopes quickly faded in FP2, where the car reverted to being slow and difficult to drive—likely due to either setup changes or simply the real competitive order reasserting itself.
Nearly one second of gap
Ferrari needed a final benchmark to understand its real standing—and FP3 provided just that. Unfortunately for the Scuderia, the verdict was brutal. The SF-25 looked far from competitive, finding itself locked in a close fight with Red Bull and Mercedes for the title of “best of the rest,” but a full seven tenths behind the leading McLaren of Oscar Piastri. Upon hearing the gap from his race engineer Bryan Bozzi, Charles Leclerc let out a disheartened “Oh my God…” over the radio. Hamilton’s deficit was even worse, over a second off the pace.
It was a grim picture for the Maranello squad. Only an exceptional qualifying could salvage something from this weekend. Otherwise, this result may mark the definitive collapse of Ferrari’s 2025 ambitions—and remove any remaining excuses from team leadership about the long-promised but never-delivered performance improvements. In short, it might be the wake-up call the technical department needs to accept reality and react—something other teams have already shown they’re capable of doing.
