Why Ferrari's management is under pressure after its bad start to F1 2025, not Hamilton or Leclerc

Ferrari has got the start to Formula 1 2025 that many predicted.

It is indeed in the midst of a multi-team scrap early in the overall constructors' championship battle. But it has no grand prix wins or podiums. It's currently tied with Williams on just 17 points, with Haas three behind and Aston Martin four further back in seventh.

Ferrari is already further adrift than the 14-point margin by which it lost the 2024 constructors’ fight to McLaren – the early dominant force this year (its lead would be even greater without Oscar Piastri’s spin in the Melbourne opener).

After two rounds in 2025, Ferrari has registered its worst start to an F1 season in points terms since the modern distribution system was introduced in 2010. But back then, a new era unfurling with the arrival of a multiple world champion – Fernando Alonso – had kicked off with a season-opening GP win.

And while Lewis Hamilton sort of broke his Ferrari duck with his Shanghai sprint triumph, Kimi Raikkonen winning on his Ferrari debut in 2007 (the last Scuderia driver to do so and clinch the championship in his first season in scarlet) it was not, let alone Alonso in Bahrain in 2010.

In winning his first sprint since these were introduced in F1 in 2021, Hamilton made clear his disdain in comparing such a win to a full GP triumph, saying “obviously it's a sprint race – it's not the main race – but even just to get that is a good stepping stone to where I'm working towards”.

That his biggest moment of outward celebration on Shanghai Saturday was when he ran to rejoice with his mechanics in parc ferme (a rare post-sprint sight) shows just how much Hamilton wants that first full Ferrari victory. But Ferrari’s China weekend collapsed from that point onward.

Hamilton's sprint win in Shanghai comes with caveats

Photo by: Kym Illman

The team has been lambasted for its post-sprint set-up changes (more on this later), but McLaren ultimately scoring a dominant 1-2 in the Chinese GP emphasised how Saturday's sprint was really a case of the orange squad underperforming. Its sprint qualifying run plan going awry opened up circumstances that Hamilton merrily and impressively exploited.

But what Ferrari cannot be so easily absolved over from the Shanghai weekend is its post-GP double disqualification – the first in the team’s 75-year history in the world championship.

An excessive plank wear disqualification is a familiar story since the sprint format was introduced, but most significantly because Ferrari, Charles Leclerc and Hamilton (then at Mercedes) were those eliminated from the results of the 2023 United States GP for this exact infraction. This was previously the most recent example of a plank wear violation.

What makes things worse this time around is that the sprint format rules have been changed to allow set-up adjustments after the shorter race on such weekends. Losing a practice session to assess the full impact of a race stint on plank wear and then being trapped, unable able to make the necessary changes, has been gone as a factor since 2024 started.

Add into the mix how hiring Hamilton leaves Ferrari exposed in terms of such calls and car design flaws given his palmares and the pressure on Vasseur and his deputies is huge

Ferrari also should have been acquainted with the issue that led to Leclerc’s Shanghai DQ – in his car being slightly underweight after a mid-race strategy conversion to a one-stopper. This is exactly what happened to George Russell that cost him the Belgian GP win last year.

And this was all just one week on from Ferrari’s botched strategy of trying to hang on with slicks when the rain returned in Australia – effectively condemning Leclerc and Hamilton to their eighth and 10th finishing positions respectively.

These are exactly the sort of things Ferrari was supposed to have eliminated under Fred Vasseur’s leadership – and indeed appeared more or less sorted since he joined two years ago.

Hamilton and Leclerc were DQ'd from the Austin sprint in 2023

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

The difference now is that 2025 was supposed to be Ferrari’s first full title tilt since the 2022 false dawn, which featured so many strategy shambles and ultimately did for Vasseur’s predecessor, Mattia Binotto.

Add into the mix how hiring Hamilton leaves Ferrari exposed in terms of such calls and car design flaws given his palmares (a point that must include acknowledgement that he is seemingly past his ultra-high performance peak of his Mercedes title run) and the pressure on Vasseur and his deputies is huge.

The poor start will only have turbocharged this feeling. And so, it’s little wonder that Vasseur is hitting out at media coverage of Ferrari – such as the F1TV oversight that led to Hamilton’s suggestion of letting Leclerc through at the start of their team orders exchange in the second China race being omitted.

Vasseur is well within his rights to call out the “joke from FOM” in this instance, but it was merely a distraction to the much worse error(s) of having two cars from the same team disqualified on two different technical grounds.

Hamilton and Leclerc are doing their bit, with a new car package to adapt to for the former and much changed one for the latter. Hamilton’s teamwork was at the heart of the team radio furore, while Leclerc was impressive in showing stronger pace than his team-mate with a damaged car in the same event.

That it stemmed from an intra-Ferrari collision – however brief and accidental – only reinforces the well-established point of how hard it is to upend form runs in F1. The SF-25 package seemingly has a narrow operating window to reach McLaren-bothering pace, which again heaps pressure elsewhere on Ferrari needing to push to the limit in other areas – such as strategy and potentially race fuel loads or ride heights.

McLaren is surfing the wave of its dominant car package – taking three wins on the bounce for the first time since 2012, starting with its constructors’-clinching triumph in Abu Dhabi last year. Ferrari, bar Hamilton’s China sprint success, hasn’t caught a break let alone a wave in the same run.

With Hamilton and Leclerc in its ranks, focus at Ferrari has turned to its strategy and set-up calls

Photo by: Mark Thompson - Getty Images

There should be no need to consider plank wear or the weight loss of an unexpected one-stopper at the smooth, but tyre-testing, Suzuka layout this weekend. It’s Ferrari’s first chance to steady the ship and correct course, which it needs to ace at a track where it hasn’t won since Michael Schumacher's 2004 win, six days before Charles Leclerc's seventh birthday...

After all, in McLaren ending its 26-year wait for a constructors’ title by beating Ferrari last year, the Scuderia’s 16-season streak without a championship of any sort is now the glaring standout from F1’s remaining grandee teams.

That is the cross Ferrari’s management is now bearing. Alone.

Ferrari's woes in 2025 are a team effort

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images