Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur believes there is still untapped potential in their car as they remain without a podium finish so far this year.
The team brought a floor upgrade at the previous round in Bahrain which appeared to improve the SF-25’s balance. Vasseur confirmed they expect it to deliver more around the high-speed sweeps of Jeddah.However with the leading teams often separated by no more than a few hundredths of a second, Vasseur said it is proving difficult to extract the maximum from their cars.
“The ingredients are all there, but now it’s like cooking and you have to put the ingredients together at the right stage,” he said.
“Honestly, I don’t have the feeling that we’ve extracted the best from the car so far. Perhaps on some occasions, in some sessions. But I’d say it’s true for us and for the others. Even McLaren, with the step they have compared to the rest of the grid, sometimes you have one of their cars that is struggling a bit more.
“It is what it is. A couple of years ago, you could go [through] Q1 with a set of medium [tyres], do one lap, and you were in Q2. Today, even the top teams have to put on two sets of softs sometimes.
“Again, the field is very, very tight, and each time you make a mistake, you can lose five or six positions. Then the conclusion from [those] outside is that it’s a drama. We’re more focused on pure performance, and five hundredths is not a drama.
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“That means we need to stay calm in the analysis if we want to improve. I think it was one of the skills of the team last year to be able to capitalise by hundredths of a second at a time. I hope we’ll follow the same path this year.”
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were encouraged by the car’s performance on the medium tyre compound in Bahrain, especially over the middle stint. Vasseur said they must concentrate on delivering that level of performance consistently over a weekend.
“It’s true that this stint went well for us. Unfortunately, the Safety Car came also a bit too early.
“Now the issue – or the project – is to be much more consistent [than] to have a good stint in the race or a good stint in Q3 or Q2.”
He said the Chinese Grand Prix was an example: Hamilton won the sprint race but the team performed less well in the grand prix, then both cars were disqualified for technical infringements.
“If we want to come back and fight for the win, we need to have much more consistent weekends,” said Vasseur. “This one has started in a good way. But I think it was a good example [in] China: The sprint race and the sprint quali went well and as you can imagine, we didn’t turn the car upside down after winning the first one for the day after. We are really on the edge.
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“I don’t want to speak about the others, but as soon as you push a bit too much, you pay the price with the tyres the corner after. It’s really on the edge, very difficult to find the right balance. But we are improving in this direction.”
Ferrari scored podium finishes in each of the last three rounds of 2024 but has not taken any so far this year.
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Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
19th April 2025, 11:17
I don’t think your biggest problem is the car Fred.
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
19th April 2025, 12:37
What is?
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
19th April 2025, 13:11
Organisation in my opinion.
I have said before that I believe Ferrari employs a lot of people simply because they have relatives in high places within the company.
It seems to me that many of them are content to strut around the paddock/pit lane like they are part of a great F1 legacy, rather than actually doing the job.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
20th April 2025, 16:06
It’s good to have a family culture, but sometimes not too literally, and certainly when nepotism is out of hand it can become too hard to deal with.
These kinds of cultural shifts do not happen over night, it could take Ferrari years to change their culture/leadership. But what they can do is get honest with themselves, and individuals can raise their hands up and admit when they are wrong. If people cannot even tell they are wrong, or have no way to understand this, then clearly the business processes need to be reviewed to enable more honesty in the organization.
The more integrity and honesty Ferrari has, the faster they get to the front of the grid with a car, that has real potential. Also, there are lessons to learn in other motorsports like MotoGP, w/ Ducati and their problems with the control tire 2009+. Sometimes there are issues which are outside of an organization’s ability to deal with. This is why 2026, is a real problem for formula 1. This is why the FIA is a real problem for Formula 1. Because there is too much politics in the way of prohibiting real opportunity for organizations to suite their core abilities/skills.
MichaelN
19th April 2025, 16:14
This is all well and good, but we’re five GP weekends into the season.
Aside from the China sprint, it’s been a very unimpressive performance.
They still have fewer points than Verstappen has on his own.