It has surely not been the start to the 2025 season that Ferrari had hoped for. Coming into this year’s campaign, the expectation was that they will take the fight to McLaren for the Constructors’ Championship.
While one half of that prediction seems to have been true so far, with McLaren once again emerging as the team to beat, Ferrari have not even managed a podium in any of the Grands Prix so far. The Italian outfit grabbed five points in the opening week in Australia before facing a double disqualification in China.
However, they did seem to show considerable improvement last weekend in Japan as Charles Leclerc finished fourth—Ferrari’s highest finish on a Sunday this season—while Lewis Hamilton finished seventh. Due to such a poor start to the season, Ferrari are fourth in the standings with 35 points, already a whopping 76 points behind leaders McLaren.
Naturally, they are trying everything to salvage their campaign, and an early upgrade package to this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix seems to be part of their efforts.
“We got an upgrade this weekend so I’m excited, we’re gonna, hopefully, have a bit more downforce,” Hamilton said in his pre-race interview. “I’m not really feeling huge amounts of issues, it’s just that we lack overall performance, pace-wise, which we’ll hopefully take a step this weekend”.
#BahrainGP | Lewis Hamilton: “We got an upgrade this weekend so I’m excited, we’re gonna, hopefully, have a bit more downforce.”
“I’m not really feeling huge amounts of issues, it’s just that we lack overall performance, pace wise, which we’ll hopefully take a step this… pic.twitter.com/ezkcktTtCt
— deni (@fiagirly) April 10, 2025
The Bahrain GP seems like a good place for Ferrari to bring in upgrades as pre-season testing took place here, and so the team can gather crucial data to evaluate how much performance they have been able to gain thanks to their upgrade.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur is hoping that they can improve upon their qualifying performance, as he believes that most of the races this season will be won or lost during qualifying. “For sure, qualifying is always crucial in the performance,” Vasseur said after last weekend’s race at Suzuka.
“The smaller the gap is between cars, the more true that is. Because you are in the group of cars. It’s not that you are just one fighting with the guy in front of you. Yes, it will probably be a ‘quali’ championship,” he added.
Vasseur’s point does seem to be accurate for last weekend’s Japanese GP, at least, as 14 of the 20 drivers finished the race in the same position they started, including the top six. So, if Ferrari are to compete with the likes of McLaren, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, and perhaps even the two Mercedes, they will definitely need to find more pace over one lap as starting position will be key for most of the races going forward.
After all, since the current generation of cars are much bigger and heavier, it is much more difficult to overtake. So, Ferrari’s latest upgrade of increased downforce should definitely give them the additional pace they need to deliver a better qualifying performance, as long as the handling of the SF-25 does not become too difficult.
