Ferrari has made some small progress in the last two races of the 2025 Formula 1 season. The updates to the floor, although still insufficient, have allowed Charles Leclerc to improve his race performance, thanks to a less unstable rear end. However, the narrow setup window forces the Maranello team to make compromises, as seen at the 6.174-kilometre Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Saudi Arabia, where the setup was partially decided to suit the Saudi layout.
Additionally, the dynamic performance of the SF-25 single-seater significantly depends on aerodynamic choices, which vary depending on the track. Specifically, with less downforce settings, the combined grip of the tires is sharply reduced, both longitudinally and laterally. In simple terms, this refers to a potential lack of aero-mechanical interaction, which can only be addressed with the aerodynamic updates that should be introduced by the Maranello engineers and technicians in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend at the Imola circuit.
Going into more detail, it is known that vertical downforce helps generate grip on the ground through the suspension’s work. Depending on the chosen static angles for the tires, dynamic behaviors are primarily governed by camber recovery, aimed at stabilizing the car with respect to load shifts and lateral acceleration.
Looking at what happened between the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, it is evident that the Italian car showed different behavior in medium-speed corners. Aside from the endemic understeering issue on entry, telemetry shows Charles Leclerc‘s struggles on corner exit. As often happens, the Monegasque driver is aggressive on entry, gaining on his competitors.
However, he suffers particularly when the Ferrari accelerates with steering angle. This, despite the fact that Charles Leclerc’s driving style suffers more compared to Lewis Hamilton’s. At the Bahrain International Circuit, the higher load helped manage the combined traction, while in Jeddah, this was lacking, and the right mass setup was not found to optimize the tire contact patch.
In medium-speed corners, where vertical downforce is not high, the tires are stressed both laterally and longitudinally due to traction. The result of these forces must equal the vertical force, provided by downforce, load transfer, and the vehicle’s mass on each tire, multiplied by the grip coefficient between rubber and track surface. From this analysis, it can be concluded that McLaren, and especially Red Bull, despite suffering other types of problems that they will try to address with the upcoming aerodynamic update package for Imola, are more efficient at generating downforce in these track sections. This allows them to have a greater amount of combined grip and optimal traction phase.
Moreover, we know that grip generation by the tires is proportional to the slip angle. In other words, this is the angle between the tire’s direction and the car’s actual racing line. Ferrari struggles more with managing this, as it does not have the same baseline vertical downforce as the other top teams, as confirmed by Charles Leclerc last weekend in Saudi Arabia.
An additional clarification must be made regarding the grip provided by the tires in slow corners, where longitudinal traction is key. In Saudi Arabia, this aspect was pointed out, but it does not actually represent a real performance deficit for the Ferrari. The SF-25 car does not have problems when it comes to providing non-combined grip, such as in corner 1 exits. On the contrary, the Ferrari single-seater has plenty of longitudinal grip but less lateral grip. To resolve these issues on medium-to-low aerodynamic load circuits, the Maranello team will need to efficiently extract downforce from the floor. This way, the setup operating window can be widened, allowing for improved combined grip and, consequently, performance in medium-speed corners.
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