Why Ferrari’s first 2025 F1 podium hints at Leclerc and Hamilton’s untapped potential

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Ferrari entered the 2025 Formula One season surrounded by hype. This year marked the first campaign with driver duo Charles Leclerc and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.

Questions engulfed the team: could Hamilton win his record-breaking eighth title? Which driver would come out on top in the teammate battle? Could Ferrari secure its first constructors’ championship since 2008? After all, it finished the 2024 season on a high after a late surge in performance, finishing just 14 points off McLaren.

But once the cars hit the track, it was evident that Ferrari wasn’t competing for race wins. Australia’s race, which had mixed conditions, saw Leclerc finish eighth and Hamilton 10th. At the next grand prix, in China, both drivers were disqualified (though the Briton won the sprint race). Ferrari couldn’t crack the podium in Japan, with Leclerc finishing a distant fourth behind Max Verstappen and McLaren duo Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and they finished fourth and fifth in Bahrain, with Hamilton eight seconds behind Leclerc.

Saudi Arabia marked the fifth race in six weeks and it didn’t look promising for Ferrari. Qualifying told a similar story despite the team bringing upgrades, Leclerc qualifying fourth and Hamilton in seventh. And Leclerc was far from thrilled on Saturday.

So, imagine the surprise that came from Ferrari’s pace on Sunday when Leclerc got into free air on the first stint, extending his medium tire longer than anyone else before pitting for the hard tire on lap 29. Hamilton may be struggling, but Leclerc showed how the Prancing Horse is closer to the top teams on race pace than many previously thought with his third-place finish.

“I never expected to finish here,” Leclerc told reporters Sunday. “Honestly, I thought that this race was about defending the cars behind, especially Kimi (Antonelli). So it was really good.”

That podium put Ferrari within 11 points of third-place Red Bull, but Ferrari faces the issue of where its Saturday hampers its Sunday, limiting the opportunities. And it’s taking a toll on both the constructor and driver standings.

“Obviously, there are answers in what we are doing, and we are doing something wrong, clearly. We’ve got to find it,” Leclerc said. “We cannot lose too many races before finding it because we’re already 50 points down in the drivers’ championship. We’re not looking at it too much, but 50 points is a big number.

“I don’t want to be losing more points than that in the next few races.”

Ferrari lacked competitive pace this season, so it brought a floor upgrade to Bahrain in hopes of improving performance. More upgrades were brought to Saudi Arabia, though it didn’t seem like it helped matters on Saturday — Leclerc qualified 0.376 seconds off Verstappen’s pole position lap.

“I’m a bit disappointed here because we had (a) few upgrades that should have helped and the gap seems to be pretty similar to before,” Leclerc said. When asked whether the upgrade worked as hoped, the Ferrari driver said, “It does. But unfortunately, I feel like the (other teams) have done as much of a step, which means the gap hasn’t really changed.”

Qualifying typically is a session where Leclerc thrives, but this string of less-than-ideal starting positions for the legendary team comes at a time when the Monegasque driver feels good in the SF-25. He thinks he has “found the sweet spot of the car that matches my driving style,” Leclerc said Saturday.

“I feel like in the last three qualifyings, I managed to maximize the potential of the car, but the potential is just not yet at the level where I wanted to be.”

Leclerc was happy with his race pace (Sipa USA)

Qualifying fourth isn’t necessarily terrible, but this is Ferrari, so the bar is higher. Leclerc put everything into his lap that qualified him fourth, which he acknowledged was “really good,” but he was “really not happy” because of the car.

“I put everything out there, but for now, the performance of the car is just not there,” he said Saturday. “I either have massive understeer or massive oversteer, but the end result is that I don’t have enough grip to reproduce what the guys in front do.”

The qualifying order appears to have become more powerful this season, with the driver who secured pole winning the first four races. And with tracks such as the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Saudi Arabia, where there aren’t many overtaking spots, Saturday carries even more importance.

The field continues to converge in the final year of the current set of regulations. The difference of just hundredths of a second can drop a driver back several spots on the starting grid, as team principal Fred Vasseur noted on Friday during the FIA news conference.

Ferrari’s car has shown glimpses of pace, but what is needed to unlock the SF-25’s potential? When asked this question after FP1, Vasseur said, “It’s quite difficult to put everything together,” noting how the tires can be sensitive and mistakes are costly.

Ferrari has the components — two strong drivers, a car that has pace that needs to be unlocked and an on-point team that has been stellar with pit stops. The key is putting it all together and the Prancing Horse came the closest it has all season on Sunday thanks to Leclerc’s strategy.

One of Pirelli’s pre-race one-stop strategies focused on drivers starting on the medium tire, pitting between laps 16 and 22, and finishing the race on the hard tire. Leclerc, though, extended his stint to dive into the pits on lap 29.

To put this into perspective, Pirelli’s other one-stop strategy predicted drivers starting on the hard tires and swapping for mediums, suggesting that the pit window would be between laps 28 and 34. Lando Norris opted for that strategy, pitting on lap 34 to swap hard tires for mediums.

“From the beginning, the first couple of laps, he was a bit conservative,” Vasseur said to F1 TV. “He knew that strategy was to extend and he did very well from lap one to the end. But I think he pushed every single lap as a quali lap and it went very well also on tire management.”

Leclerc said after the race that they “maximized absolutely everything we could have this weekend” and that “there wasn’t much more we could have done.” The strategy and pit stops were solid, but he did note that qualifying is a weak point.

“I think we need to focus on qualifying because it’s been a very long time I haven’t been as happy with the car balance,” Leclerc said. “I feel very at ease with the car in a way that I know I can extract the maximum out of the car more often than not, but unfortunately, the car potential is just not good enough to fight for better in qualifying. In the race, the good car balance had results. We were all surprised by our pace in free air on the first stint. That was really good.”

Clean/dirty air has been a recurring topic this season and Leclerc commented how he struggled with understeer and the car’s balance when behind George Russell. But once the Mercedes driver went into the pits on lap 20, “The front came alive and the car felt a lot better. Then I could manage the fronts a little bit better, and the performance came much better once I was in free air.”

The crucial pass that landed Leclerc on the podium came on lap 38, as the Ferrari driver zipped past Russell on fresher tires. It became a matter of keeping Norris behind while navigating through traffic, as the front of the field caught up with the backmarkers. On lap 47 out of 50, Leclerc was only 0.009 seconds quicker than Norris, thanks to his speedy sector 1. By comparison, on lap 45, Norris was going 0.975 seconds faster.

“I knew it was going to be tight. He was very quick. I wasn’t worried, but I knew it was going to be close. I didn’t know what to expect with the traffic,” Leclerc said. “At one point, I had to avoid, I think, Bortoleto and I went in the marbles — lost a lot of time. Lando nearly got into my DRS range, which would’ve made it trickier to keep him behind. But he got stuck around 1.2, 1.3 seconds for the last few laps.”

Leclerc’s form was reminiscent of where he left off in 2024, when he finished on the podium in seven of the final 10 race weekends.

Ferrari’s first podium is a boost for the team (Sipa USA)

Ferrari may have its first podium finish of the season under its belt, but the Prancing Horse needs to find a way to put a full weekend together. While the race pace is there, qualifying is a struggle.

“I think we actually have a very good race car in order to be fighting for wins,” Leclerc told Sky Sports on Sunday. “But at the moment, we are just losing our weekends on the Saturday.”

The cars are under parc fermé conditions from the start of qualifying until the start of the race, meaning only minor adjustments can be made to the car without a penalty. Teams have to determine their setups before the first qualifying lap and they sometimes have to make compromises either for qualifying or the race.

Leclerc said Ferrari, though, isn’t making compromises and setting the SF-25 up better for the grand prix. It is about what will make the car the fastest.

“But once we are in qualifying (and) you are pushing to the limit (and) there’s the tire preparation also in the loop, then things are not clicking for us at the moment and we need to try to find something,” Leclerc said to Sky Sports. “But I will say, overall, our strength is tire management. What we are lacking is just downforce compared to the Red Bulls, compared to the McLaren, also compared to the Mercedes.”

Leclerc does feel that Ferrari is “close on the race pace” to be able to fight for wins, but it boils down to having a better spot on the starting grid. Vasseur agreed on Friday, saying, “Ingredients are all there, but now it’s like cooking, and you have to put the ingredients together at the right stage.”

“The field is very, very tight, and each time you make a mistake, you can lose five or six positions. Then the conclusion from outside is that it’s a drama. We’re more focused on pure performance and five hundredths is not a drama,” Vasseur continued during Friday’s news conference.

“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 capitalize hundredths of a second at a time. I hope we’ll follow the same path this year.”

(Top photo: Eurasia Sport Images/Just Pictures/Sipa USA)

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