Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has opened up about the team’s average start to the 2025 season, as Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc struggle to contend with McLaren and Red Bull for Grand Prix victories. Vasseur also highlighted that the team intended to run the car lower but the current regulations prevent it from doing so.
Vasseur seemed unbothered about Ferrari missing out on a strong start, suggesting that the team tends to build momentum as the season progresses. Ferrari ran into challenges last year with the SF-24 F1 car, only to come out strong later on. The car was strong enough to challenge McLaren for the Constructors’ Championship, a battle that lasted until the last lap of the race in Abu Dhabi. However, McLaren managed to outperform Ferrari by just 14 points.
For seven-time world champion Hamilton, the new beginning with Ferrari has come with its share of challenges, but on the bright side, he won the sprint race in China two weeks ago. Addressing Ferrari’s performance after the first three races of the current season, Vasseur jokingly began:
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“I’m used [to it] because the last two years we started like this.
“For sure it is not ideal and I would prefer to win the first one. But we don’t need to change the approach from last year as we are almost in the same situation, perhaps a bit worse in terms of pace, and the reaction of the team was very, very strong.
“We worked as a team, made small step by small step and we have to keep exactly the same approach, but for sure it is not ideal.”
Ferrari faced a major setback after the Chinese Grand Prix, where Hamilton and Leclerc were disqualified. In the post-race scrutiny, the FIA found that the plank thickness on Hamilton’s SF-25 was less than the permitted thickness of 9mm, which could have occurred due to a lower ride height. Leclerc’s car, meanwhile, did not meet the minimum weight requirement of 800 kg.
In 2023, Leclerc and Hamilton were disqualified for increased plank wear after the United States Grand Prix, which led Vasseur to explain the cars of the current era are extremely sensitive to height variations. He said:
“We all want to run the car lower, we would all have more downforce in the situation, for everybody but there is a limit. The limit is bottoming and the limit is the regulations.
“We are all spending the weekend on where is the limit and where can we run the car a bit lower and then you are too low. It is the same for everybody and we all know with this type of car, performance is a lot linked to the ride height.
“It is true for us, it is true for everybody, it is true today but it was true for the last two years. We were disqualified in Austin in 2023 with Mercedes, because we were trying to reach the same point. It is not the characteristic of the car this year or the characteristic of the Ferrari, it is true for all the field.”
As F1 heads to Bahrain this weekend, the pressure will be on Ferrari to choose the right setup for optimum performance and steer clear of disqualification risks.