The hidden physical flaw undermining Ferrari’s SF-25 amid design error. Ferrari's SF-25 suffers from excessive floor wear due to issues with ride height stability.

The Miami Grand Prix weekend fully exposed the limits of the Ferrari SF-25 single-seater at the start of the 2025 Formula 1 season, a car that has never been so far behind the top competition, especially in terms of qualifying session. The words of Frederic Vasseur, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc outline an apparent contradiction of ideas, which converge in a car at the limit of its capabilities in the current conditions, yet with untapped potential. Floor wear is hindering the SF-25, which is affected by problems in managing ride heights, raising the collective question of what has led to such a situation.

In Florida, all of the SF-25’s weaknesses exploded, going far beyond the shortcomings in slow corners that were so problematic in the second sector. The Italian side’s 2025 F1 car suffers from such a narrow operating window that it is nearly invisible, to use Lewis Hamilton’s words, which is translating to an extremely short operating window that, on a mixed circuit like the Miami International Autodrome, left the Maranello team without the necessary tools to find a compromise balance between high and low speeds. Ferrari is proving to be a difficult car to set up, a complexity that is particularly penalizing on Sprint weekends with only one free practice session to work on the setup.

One has to wonder how much of the issues exposed in Florida are intrinsic design flaws and how much are the result of another problem. Lewis Hamilton admitted after the race that the team was not where they wanted to be, acknowledging a significant loss of performance over the past six races. The seven-time Formula 1 world champion indicated they were aware of the source of the issues and were awaiting aerodynamic updates in order to help recover some of the lost pace. His remarks echoed sentiments he had already expressed at the Suzuka International circuit in Japan, where he had noted that they were running higher than they would prefer.

All of this redirects attention to the difficulties in stabilizing ride height, forcing the car to run higher and lose downforce from the floor in order to avoid wearing down the plank beyond the allowed limit, as explained by F1 expert Carlo Platella for the Italian website formulapassion.

This hypothesis is further supported by a recent report from AutoRacer, which claims the Maranello team is working on a rear suspension modification to address the issue. In the meantime, the SF-25 is running higher than intended and far from its design conditions, operating completely outside of its window. So while Charles Leclerc’s comments about a car lacking rhythm in the current conditions are true, team principal Frederic Vasseur’s statements about the car’s untapped potential are also accurate, potential sacrificed to limit floor wear.

The original sin of the Maranello team’s engineers and technicians lies in the difficulty of stabilizing ride height, a problem of both mechanical and aerodynamic nature. When asking whether the simulator led the team astray, it is important to consider that its accuracy depends on the quality of the input data, which in turn are obtained from other simulations carried out in separate environments. The behavior of the suspension system, for example, is analyzed on dynamic test benches, which are platforms with actuators where the complete car is placed, theoretically capable of highlighting abnormal responses or deformations in the mechanical parts.

The quality of a suspension, however, is not defined in absolute terms, but is relative to the loads it must manage. In other words, the mechanical setup must match the aerodynamic load and its fluctuations, and be designed with the various track scenarios in mind. Aerodynamic development data comes from the wind tunnel, but the model there lacks suspension systems and, crucially, it’s unable to investigate what happens when the car gets close to the ground, since damaging the moving belt must be avoided.

Jock Clear, Ferrari’s Senior Performance Engineer, explained last November that the floor operates within the boundary layer as it is the component closest to the ground, presenting a unique aerodynamic challenge. The experienced British engineer emphasized the need to gather real-world data from the car to establish a strong correlation between wind tunnel results and the car’s behaviour when running close to the ground.

In recent months, Ferrari has paid close attention to studying the aerodynamic performance of the floor when it approaches the track surface. The experimental version introduced in Las Vegas last November was specifically aimed at collecting data in this particular scenario, to correlate it with wind tunnel results. The Maranello team had recently replaced the wind tunnel’s moving belt to facilitate such analyses. This intervention was later indirectly confirmed by Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur during the SF-25’s presentation: Frederic Vasseur acknowledged that the team had made progress in the wind tunnel last year and emphasized that they were continually working to enhance every development tool at their disposal.

Therefore, the inadequacy of Ferrari’s suspension is also the result of a physical problem common to all tracks, though Ferrari took a more extreme approach in designing a car meant to run very close to the ground. In the 2024 Formula 1 championship, the main factor limiting minimum ride height was bouncing, and with that issue resolved, plank wear became the only limiting factor. Once the SF-25 hit the track, the team could finally fully verify the interaction between the mechanical and aerodynamic components, which both deeply changed for the 2025 F1 car, but found excessive floor wear.

One must also ask whether the issue was worsened by the FIA’s intervention at last year’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, which was unusual for its timing, method, and lack of warning. The FIA clarified which practices were illegal in protecting the plank’s metal skids from wear, with Frederic Vasseur admitting that the team had to make changes. Undoubtedly, the departure of former technical director Enrico Cardile last July did not help either. The role of the Italian aerodynamicist was taken over temporarily by the Team Principal himself before handing it to Loic Serra in October, leaving the SF-25 without continuous oversight. However, Ferrari’s gap to the front is as much a result of its own shortcomings as of McLaren’s achievements, with the MCL39 single-seater making a leap forward that no other team has been able to replicate.

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