Lewis Hamilton hopes Ferrari’s first upgrade package of the season for the F1 Bahrain GP will help resolve some of the issues plaguing the SF-25, with Charles Leclerc also sharing his opinion.
Ferrari has endured a challenging start to the 2025 season, with their best result so far being Lewis Hamilton’s sprint win in China. However, their struggles have been evident both in qualifying and in the main Sunday races. The Scuderia suffered a major blow at the Chinese GP with a double disqualification from the main race—Hamilton for excessive plank wear and Charles Leclerc for his car being underweight.
The Japanese GP saw a slight improvement, with Leclerc securing fourth—a result he said was the maximum they could have done on the day—and Hamilton finishing seventh. Ferrari is currently fourth in the standings, having struggled to keep up with McLaren and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who took his first win of the season last week in Suzuka.
After the race, Hamilton revealed that there’s a “deficit” on his car, adding, “on my side, something is underperforming.”
Hamilton discusses Ferrari setup differences
“I can’t expand on it, no,” Hamilton said in his print media session in Bahrain when asked to clarify his remarks about the performance disparity between himself and Leclerc.
“He had the setup very similar to some of the other races, so I think he was happy with his balance. Very similar in China, Melbourne and last weekend. Slightly different, nothing major.
“But of course, I’m learning all the time from watching Charles work with the team and how he works to set the car up. At some places it’s going to be different, which is normal.”
Bahrain GP upgrade unlikely to be a gamechanger
Hamilton added that he’s looking forward to the weekend ahead, as he hopes the upgrade Ferrari is introducing in Bahrain will help address some of the issues he’s been facing.
“But we’ve got a new floor this weekend, so I’m excited. The team has worked really hard to bring upgrades, as teams do.
“They work incredibly hard to be able to bring upgrades, so to have that here at the track that we tested that at, [with] more knowledge about the car and how to extract more from it, I feel really positive for the rest of the weekend.”
However, he acknowledged that Ferrari’s upgraded floor is unlikely to be a gamechanger, and more work will still be needed to close the gap to McLaren.
“We’re trying to figure out how to catch them,” Hamilton said.
“They’ve obviously got a great car, they obviously won the Constructors’ last year. They’ve started off very well this year, as have the other two top teams.
“I think we’ve learned a lot over the past few races and I think hopefully this weekend it’s a step forward for us definitely.
“[The upgrade] is not necessarily closing the gap, but it’s going towards closing the gap. It’s not going to close the gap completely. But if we can extract more from the car—which is what we’re trying to work on—hopefully we can see better results.”
Charles Leclerc “disappointed” by Ferrari’s underwhelming start to the season
The Monégasque was more measured in his assessment of the situation, admitting that the first few races of the 2025 season have been “worse than expected” for the Scuderia.
Ferrari ended 2024 as runners-up to McLaren, keeping themselves in mathematical contention until Abu Dhabi after gaining momentum in the second half of the season. This sparked hope that they may be able to show a similar level of performance again this year and possibly fight for one, or even both, championships.
“These first races have been worse than expected, and we really hope that we can be back up to fight at the front with the McLaren. So, I hope the warm weather will help us,” Leclerc said.
He continued: “I’m speaking more about the expectations that we finished last year, where we are in a good momentum with the team, that you’ve got a good car, then obviously the expectations of what you are trying to target at least as a team is to at least start from there and try and improve.
“So on that, we were a little bit disappointed to see that we had gone a step back at the beginning of this year.
“After this testing, as we said, it’s very difficult to know where you are. I felt like we maybe kind of saw straight away that McLaren was very strong, but it was still to be confirmed.
“Now it’s confirmed and I hope that we can turn that situation around. There’s a lot of work in the background, obviously. I think that the last weekend has been more or less where we are as a team, where we stand as a team. We’ve got a few new parts here, which I hope will help us to close that gap a little bit.”
