Scuderia Ferrari head into the F1 Chinese GP on the back of a bruising weekend at Albert Park as Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finished P8 and P10 respectively in their SF-25 cars.
The team had to compromise on performance in F1 Australian GP says Charles Leclerc
After the Australian GP, rumours swirled that Scuderia Ferrari had to raise their car going into qualifying and the race to avoid getting disqualified on Sunday evening.
In FP2 on Friday, Charles Leclerc was quickest from Oscar Piastri as Ferrari looked to be in the game at the front.
However, come qualifying it all went south. Leclerc in P7 was almost 0.7s off polesitter Lando Norris, with Lewis Hamilton a couple of tenths back in 8th.
Ruling out a glory run on low fuel, Leclerc explained in his F1 Chinese GP print media session that Ferrari had to make compromises, hampering the performance of the SF-25 in Australia.
“Well, I mean, for the fuel, I think it’s never really the target to be faster on a Friday than on a Saturday, so I think this one we can take it off.
“We have, obviously, a few ideas of where it can come from. I’m not going to go too much into the details, but these cars remain very, very sensitive and the very slightest change you do on the car platform can have a big influence on how it feels and how it performs.
“But sometimes you have no choice but to do that, so that’s what we’ve done. We’ll see how it goes.
“I don’t think this is going to be a limitation going forward, but it was in Melbourne on a track like this, and we’ve got to understand and anticipate whether we’ll have these kind of issues more often throughout the year.”
Leclerc: Scuderia Ferrari not at the level of McLaren F1 but a lot more speed in the car
Last Sunday a botched strategy call with both cars saw Leclerc finish P8, with Hamilton in P10. Realistically, the best they could have done was P4 and P5 on the day had they boxed at the correct time.
For most of the race the Monegasque was P5, with the seven-time World Champion stuck behind Albon and Tsunoda in P8.
While Leclerc seems convinced McLaren holds a solid pace advantage, he is also sure Scuderia Ferrari has a lot more to unlock from the SF-25, and they’ll be aiming to do that at the F1 Chinese GP this weekend.
“As a matter of fact, it’s been a very disappointing weekend. I think part of it is how we ran the car. I remain convinced that the potential of the car is much better than what we’ve seen.
“Whether it’s at the level of McLaren, I don’t think so. I think we are a step back, but we are definitely not as fast as what we’ve shown during this first weekend, so there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on our side in order to extract the maximum potential of the car whenever we are on track.
“I think there’s been a lot of analysis after this first race, there’s been a lot learned and I’m sure that will bounce back this weekend.
“So that’s why I think it’s difficult and we need to be careful to draw conclusions too early. It’s only one race out of 24.
“We didn’t do a good enough job just because we didn’t maximise the potential of our car and we should have done a better job in that and that’s why we are disappointed.
Not drawing conclusions too quickly
Leclerc is not concerned by the bad start Ferrari have had to 2025, and he says a few more samples are needed across various race tracks before a true idea of what the pecking order and gaps are.
“Then whether we need to draw conclusions because we are a step back for the rest of the season, I don’t think that’s the case.
“So we need to wait more races to see the trend.
“But yeah, our duty is to bring home the points that we can and we didn’t do that in Melbourne.
“But to say that we expect to be at the level of McLaren, not yet.”
McLaren dominance at a similar level to Verstappen/Red Bull in 2023?
Asked if he felt McLaren could demolish the opposition in 2025 in similar fashion to what Red Bull and Max Verstappen did two seasons ago when they won all but one race, the 27-year-old is convinced that will not be the case.
While Leclerc is hopeful Ferrari have the pace to challenge Mercedes and Red Bull at the F1 Chinese GP and beyond, he admits McLaren are too fast to fight with right now.
“I don’t think so. Of what we think, we don’t think so.
“But they are definitely ahead. I think in qualifying the gap that there was is more or less what there is.
“But apart from us where we were a lot behind, I think we are around Mercedes and Red Bull in terms of lap times if we put everything together. So there’s still a big chunk to get McLaren then.
Where does McLaren hold an advantage over Ferrari and the SF-25?
Asked to specify where he feels McLaren is stronger than Scuderia Ferrari, Charles Leclerc says multiple factors come into play.
McLaren blew the other teams away in the last sector in qualifying last Saturday was they did not overheat their tyres like others.
In the race itself, they were formidable, pulling out a huge gap from the rest of the grid on inters before Fernando Alonso crashed out.
While Leclerc says multiple factors come into play, he admits the SF-25 needs improvement in low and medium speed corners.
“Honestly, it’s never really one thing.
“If we look at qualifying in Melbourne, they were very, very strong compared to us in the last sector, which could be about tyres maybe more than anything.
“But then if you look at the race, it’s completely different and it’s just overall performance where we were just lacking speed, whether it’s low or high speed or degradation. It was basically all in one.
“I know and I think we know where we need to push in terms of performance for this car. The high speed, I think we did a big step forward. Low and medium speed seems to be the area where we need to work on a little bit more for now.”
