After finishing last season just 14 points behind eventual champions McLaren, Ferrari were keen on fighting for both championships in 2025. However, the Scuderia are nowhere in the title picture after the first six races this year as they are already lagging behind championship leaders McLaren by a staggering 152-point margin.
Amid this lack of competitiveness, even their strategy and decision-making have caught flak, with the team orders swap between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc at last weekend’s Miami GP ruffling feathers in the Ferrari garage.
Even though both Ferrari cars were fighting for a meager P6 finish against Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, the team’s strategists made a mess of the situation as Hamilton, who was on faster tires relative to Leclerc, had to wait for multiple laps to get a team orders assist in his favor for chasing the Italian.
The seven-time world champion was left seething as a result as he couldn’t catch the Mercedes ahead and had to swap back with Leclerc. Now, this radio exchange of Hamilton clearly reflected where Ferrari stands currently, with no hopes of getting back into win contention, let alone fighting for the title. Even former F1 mechanic Marc Priestley suggested that the Italian team could soon shift their focus toward the 2026 season.
“They are a long way from where they thought and hoped they would be this year,” Priestley said on his YouTube channel. He thinks Ferrari should weigh up the risks and rewards of switching their resources toward working on the 2026 regulations, as the 2025 title seems to be slipping out of their grasp.
Ferrari figuring out the order of things pic.twitter.com/QCt6KNpyxC
— ESPN F1 (@ESPNF1) May 4, 2025
Considering that the 2026 ruleset will make a huge impact on the pecking order, the Maranello-based outfit won’t want to miss out on being competitive next season. And given Hamilton has also signed up with them to chase championship success again, they cannot afford to mess up the 2026 car.
“’26 is coming around the corner very fast. That is a big opportunity, perhaps the biggest one for Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari,” Priestley added.
While the car is certainly a major element they need to nail down in terms of sustainable competitiveness in the new era, their operational efficacy is also something that needs fine-tuning. Priestley highlighted that indecisiveness—which has previously made people mock Ferrari often—is not a tendency of an elite championship-contending team.
The former McLaren mechanic also underscored the running gag in social media forums about Ferrari’s radio communication with their drivers: “Whenever you ask Ferrari a question, the answer that always comes back is, ‘Yea we will get back to you”.
Per Priestley, drivers like Hamilton and Leclerc cannot operate with this uncertainty on the pit wall. While Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur has made personnel changes in the strategy and engineering team, it seems like the Scuderia still has to iron out the chinks in their armor and avoid situations like what happened in Miami.
