Vasseur doesn't expect any "miracles from updates" in the coming races
On the back of a difficult start to the 2025 F1 season, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur hopes that the Italian squad will be able to find improvements regarding the balance and tyre management of the SF-25 in the coming races.
Charles Leclerc endured a tough start to the Suzuka weekend, but he managed to improve his car balance for Saturday's qualifying to at least qualify fourth on the grid for the 53-lap Japanese Grand Prix.
The Monegasque had an ordinary start to maintain his starting position, and although he needed to fend off a feisty George Russell in the opening laps, he managed to stay ahead after the only round of pit stops thanks to a perfect timing from Ferrari. The eight-time grand prix winner then held on to P4, but he was constantly three tenth per lap slower than the Red Bull of Max Verstappen and the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Leclerc's team-mate Lewis Hamilton had to work a little more after starting on the hard compound tyre. He looked very comfortable in the dying stages of his first stint, constantly posting personal best lap times despite his ageing tyres.
However, he encountered unexpected difficulties on the medium tyres. While his initial laps were very encouraging, he was then unable to find the pace to chase down Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and lost connection to his Mercedes replacement as the second stint progressed.
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur insisted that the Scuderia's 2025 F1 car, the SF-25 is currently three tenths of a second behind the field-leading McLarens both in qualifying and in terms of race pace.
“I think it’s fair to say that we were 2/3 tenths behind both in qualifying and in the race. We can do better, but this is the current picture. In fact, the gap to McLaren and Max Verstappen was quite clear after what was seen on the Japanese circuit.
"Today’s race result reflected what we saw in qualifying yesterday. With the car that we had we probably could not have done more. We were two to three tenths off the quickest in qualifying and it was pretty much the same today in the race.
"We are struggling with some aspects and we must keep working to try and extract more from the car for Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We know there is room for improvement and we need to work on car balance and tyres management.
"For next week in Bahrain, we and in fact all the teams, will have some baseline data from pre-season testing, so we will be able to get a clearer picture of where we stand and of what we need to do to improve."
Asked whether Hamilton's inverse strategy that saw Formula One's most successful driver start on the hards before switching to the mediums worked out as hoped, the Frenchman insisted that it did not make any difference given the similar behavior between the white and the yellow-banded rubber.
“Did Hamilton’s strategy not work? There was no real difference between the two compounds; degradation and performance were very similar. Hamilton followed the pace of the others when they were on the mediums, and he didn’t do any better.
"So, don’t say it was the wrong strategy, it’s just that the performance wouldn’t have changed much,” explained the Ferrari team principal at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix regarding the decision made by the team.
Although Leclerc and Hamilton urged Ferrari to bring updates to the SF-25 to close the gap to the field-leading McLaren, Vasseur reckoned that the Scuderia could actually gain more performance by improving the balance with the current package.
“We will definitely bring updates soon, but first, we need to fix the balance issues, and we need to make the most of this car. We still have potential to extract right now, and at the moment, it doesn’t make sense. But even when the updates come, there won’t be miracles for us, nor for the others. We need to take it one step at a time,” Vasseur concluded.
