Since the very beginning of the current Formula 1 season, the Ferrari team has been facing consistent and well-documented difficulties related to ride height management. This issue has emerged as one of the main factors affecting the performance of the Maranello-based squad’s SF-25 car. Perhaps the most striking and publicly discussed example of this problem came during the Chinese Grand Prix weekend. On the Saturday, Lewis Hamilton managed to secure victory in the Sprint race, delivering a strong performance that highlighted his skill and the potential of his setup at that moment. However, just twenty-four hours later, car number 44 was disqualified after the post-race checks revealed excessive wear on the car’s floor plank. It was a clear and undeniable sign that the car was particularly sensitive to the chosen ride heights and that even minor miscalculations could have dramatic consequences on compliance with the regulations.
Balancing floor wear management
Before diving deeper into the technical analysis, it is important to clarify one essential aspect that often escapes the casual observer. Under the current Formula 1 technical regulations, which govern the so-called ground-effect or “wing car” era, the ability of a car to generate vertical aerodynamic load—downforce—through the Venturi tunnels underneath the floor is absolutely crucial to its overall performance. This form of downforce is especially significant because, unlike the aerodynamic load created by the front and rear wings, the downforce generated by the floor is not influenced by the angle of the wings or by their incidence. Once this key concept is understood, it becomes much clearer that every team on the grid faces similar technical challenges in trying to balance performance and regulatory limits.
The management of ride height and floor wear is an incredibly delicate equilibrium, one that can heavily influence the outcome of an entire race weekend. Track conditions evolve constantly, temperatures change, rubber builds up, and the capacity of a team to push the car right to the mechanical and aerodynamic limits can make a major difference in lap time and tyre life. The ideal setup generally involves minimizing the ride height of the car as much as possible, since a lower car can extract greater aerodynamic efficiency from the floor. This configuration generates more downforce and, crucially, helps to seal the floor more effectively, preventing airflow leaks that could reduce performance.
However, this approach naturally comes with a significant drawback. The lower a car runs, the greater the risk of excessive plank wear. The wooden plank—actually a composite material—mounted under every Formula 1 car is regulated extremely strictly by the FIA. The governing body imposes limits to ensure that cars do not run too close to the ground, which could both endanger safety and grant an unfair aerodynamic advantage. After every race weekend, and depending on a random selection process, the group of technical delegates led by Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s Single-Seater Technical Director, inspects the condition of the plank and the titanium skid blocks that protect it.
These measurements are not taken across the entire floor area but rather at four specific points that are clearly defined in the technical regulations. During a Grand Prix, the plank can wear down by a maximum of one millimeter—a limit that most teams approach very closely, often by just a fraction. It becomes evident, therefore, that finding the perfect compromise between low ride height and legal floor wear is one of the most fragile and complex tasks in Formula 1 car setup.
The key parameter overlooked on the SF-25
From the data collected throughout the current season, combined with various comments and hints provided by members of the Ferrari technical group, it has become increasingly apparent that Ferrari is struggling more than some of its direct rivals when it comes to running its car at an optimally low ride height. The reasons behind this issue have always been complex and not immediately clear to the general public, but recently, new interpretations have helped shed light on the matter.
Some of the most insightful observations came from Inaki Rueda, who currently serves as sporting director at Sauber but previously worked as Ferrari’s head of strategy. His recent statements provide several interesting clues that connect directly to the difficulties Ferrari has been facing with the SF-25. According to Inaki Rueda, the rate and pattern of plank wear vary significantly from one team to another. Typically, most Formula 1 cars show the greatest amount of plank wear toward the rear section of the floor, where a substantial portion of the downforce is generated.
In contrast, the area of maximum wear on McLaren’s MCL39 appears to be positioned further forward. This means that for the McLaren car, the most critical wear zone lies in the front half of the floor. This difference implies, as Inaki Rueda explained, that the British team has managed to develop a more effective way of protecting the most sensitive parts of the floor. In practice, this allows McLaren to reduce the aerodynamic load in the areas that are most prone to wear, which in turn enables the engineers to lower the car even further without exceeding the FIA’s wear limits.
The immediate and very important consequence of this is that McLaren can operate its car at a ride height lower than that of several rival teams, including Ferrari. This capability represents a crucial competitive advantage. It fills in the missing piece of an analysis that many experts, including technical commentators and engineers, had started developing between March and April. At that stage of the season, it was already being speculated that certain teams had found more effective methods of preserving the floor from excessive wear, which would allow them to run a more aggressive setup in terms of ride height.
Inaki Rueda also emphasized how challenging it is to shift the floor wear pattern forward, given that most of the car’s aerodynamic load is generated at the rear. Achieving this requires a deep understanding of how the car’s aerodynamics, suspension geometry, and floor stiffness interact. Teams must find ways to maintain the necessary downforce levels while simultaneously redistributing the wear load on the plank. For Ferrari, this has meant being forced to run the car at a higher ride height—approximately two setup steps higher—than key competitors like McLaren and Red Bull.
SF-25: the nature of the ride height problem
To make this situation even clearer, Ferrari’s SF-25 appears to suffer specifically in this fundamental area, as the team has struggled to shift the primary point of floor wear further toward the front of the car. This is not to say that the Ferrari floor design is inherently flawed or ineffective. On the contrary, it does its job well within its operational window. However, compared to other teams on the grid, Ferrari generates less overall downforce when the car is lowered aggressively, forcing the engineers to adopt a higher ride height. This, inevitably, results in a performance deficit, particularly in high-speed corners where ground-effect efficiency plays a decisive role.
At this stage, it is natural to ask a key question: could the technical department led by Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur have solved or mitigated this issue during the season? The answer is not straightforward. Correcting such a problem is far from simple, as it would require modifying the car’s aerodynamic concept and mechanical setup balance—two aspects that are intricately linked and extremely sensitive. Making such changes during the season would involve an enormous amount of testing, simulation work, and correlation between wind tunnel data and on-track performance.
According to reports, McLaren and Red Bull both dedicated far more development time and resources to addressing this particular challenge. These two teams, guided respectively by Andrea Stella and Christian Horner, have invested significant engineering effort into understanding how to optimize the relationship between floor stiffness, ride height, and aerodynamic load. Their goal has been to gain the ability to run the car lower to the ground without exceeding the FIA wear limits.
This approach has clearly paid off. Both McLaren and Red Bull have demonstrated superior consistency and adaptability across a variety of tracks, from street circuits like Monaco and Singapore to high-speed venues such as Suzuka and Silverstone. Ferrari, meanwhile, has found itself more restricted in setup freedom. Because of this, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton have often struggled to extract the full potential of the SF-25, particularly during qualifying sessions where running a car low to the ground is crucial for peak aerodynamic performance.
In the broader picture, the inability to fully exploit the aerodynamic potential of the car by lowering the ride height has inevitably contributed to Ferrari’s inconsistent results throughout the 2025 Formula 1 season. The Maranello team has shown flashes of competitiveness on certain weekends, especially on circuits with smoother asphalt or lower downforce requirements, but on bumpy or high-load tracks, the limitations have become painfully evident.
Ultimately, this technical limitation forced Ferrari to accept that the SF-25 would not be able to match the flexibility and performance range of its main rivals. What initially looked like a season with strong potential for success gradually turned into a campaign filled with frustration and lost opportunities. The persistent ride height sensitivity, combined with the need to operate the car at higher settings to avoid excessive floor wear, transformed what could have been a triumphant year for Ferrari into a season-long struggle for consistency and competitiveness.
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