After pre-season testing in Bahrain, several experts believed that 2024 runners-up Ferrari would be McLaren’s closest challengers this season. However, Ferrari were nothing short of disappointing at the season opener in Australia, not only in terms of their poor pace but also in terms of their bad strategic calls.
Their weekend began poorly as Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton only managed to qualify seventh and eighth respectively as both drivers just did not have the pace to match the frontrunners.
It then got worse for them as Ferrari’s badly timed strategic calls of changing tires during a rain-interrupted Australian GP meant that Leclerc and Hamilton only managed to finish in P8 and P10 respectively.
After such a disappointing weekend, Leclerc believes that their fortunes will not change much in China next weekend either.
“It’s important that we react immediately, but unfortunately we are going to China, and it is definitely not a favorable track for us. We struggled a lot last year. We will work from here to try to improve as we look forward,” he explained speaking about the upcoming in Shanghai.
Charles: “It’s important that we react immediately, but unfortunately we are going to China, and it is definitely not a favorable track for us. We struggled a lot last year. We will work from here to try to improve as we look forward.”
and it‘s a sprint weekend too pic.twitter.com/g58rDXpagD
— tami. (@Vetteleclerc) March 16, 2025
Despite his apprehensions, the Scuderia will be content if they can achieve a similar result as they did last year at the Shanghai International Circuit. The duo of Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished fourth and fifth respectively in the Grand Prix last season.
With a 24-race calendar, the Maranello-based team has time on their hands to rectify their situation. But the longer it takes, the more their hopes of battling McLaren for the title this year will fade away.
Where did it go wrong for Ferrari at the Australian GP?
Throughout the Australian Grand Prix, the SF-25 never looked like a package that could match the pace of the Red Bull or the McLaren. In fact, the key reason why the team lacked pace was an apparent tire wear issue.
Following Antonelli’s promotion to P4, this is how the constructors stack up #F1 #AusGP pic.twitter.com/N3PeY9KOXI
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 16, 2025
Both Hamilton and Leclerc struggled to keep performance in the Pirelli rubber, and the tricky conditions only made matters worse. Leclerc even spun out while chasing the RB of Yuki Tsunoda in the latter half of the race.
As for Hamilton, this certainly would not have been the ideal start to his Ferrari career and he expressed his concerns with the SF-25 on the team radio after the race. “It was very tricky and went a lot worse than I thought it would go. The car was really, really hard to drive today,” he said after the race.
