A Car With No Rhythm and Drivers with No Say - Are Ferrari Ready for Change?
The 2025 F1 season was meant to mark a new era for Scuderia Ferrari. With Lewis Hamilton arriving at the team, many hoped that Ferrari would be on the rise, fighting for both championships. Bringing together the most decorated team with the most decorated driver would hopefully be the turning stone that the team was in dire need of. Instead, 10 races into the season, fans have been left shaking their heads as Ferrari fell back into old habits.
After a disappointing Canadian Grand Prix, Hamilton said that this year's Ferrari is like dancing with "someone who has no rhythm." The comments came off the back of a race where Hamilton suffered from an early setback with his car damaged after running over a groundhog on lap 13. Things on the other side of the Ferrari garage weren't any better. Team radios during the race had Charles Leclerc confirming that he wanted to go to "Plan B" with this strategy. Ferrari decided to go with their own plan and Leclerc was left frustrated on the radio after his pit stop.
The Canadian Grand Prix is one of many races where the drivers have been frustrated with strategy calls and the car. The 2025 season has been a series of disappointments for the Scuderia who can't seem to find their feet.
Fred Vasseur had said before the season started that the team had redesigned 99% of last year’s car. A statement that worried some fans since the 2024 car was a strong contender with the drivers liking the feel and the team finishing in P2 in the Constructors’. But Ferrari didn't think they’d be able to develop the car any further, so a redesign was necessary. So far, that decision hasn’t paid off. Since the start of the season both of the drivers have been vocal about how unhappy they are. The go-to line for Ferrari at the moment is that there is still more pace to unlock. With summer break fast approaching, you have to wonder when they'll find that pace.
For Hamilton, this season is about trying to learn a new car, a new team and a new language. Not an easy feat for any driver, but especially one who had been with his last team for over a decade. It's been a difficult start to the season for the seven-time world champion. It wasn't made better by the fact that he and his teammate had to face a post race disqualification from the Chinese Grand Prix for a separate technical infringements. It’s easy to see that this isn’t a car that Hamilton is used to and his most recent comments after the Canadian Grand Prix highlights that. He can't find a way to get this car to respond to him, making race weekends harder than they need to be.
The car, however, only contributes to part of the problem. What seems to be the more glaring issue at the moment is the communication between driver and team. Whilst Hamilton struggled with damage to his car, Leclerc was having problems with his race engineer who ignored Leclerc's strategy request. And like most of Ferrari's issues, this isn't a one race problem. Hamilton has regularly been given information he hasn't asked for, with no information about his actual request. It’d be easy to think that these were just teething problems for a driver in a new team but the same kind of issues have cropped up at the Scuderia over the last few seasons. There has been a lack of clarity in the team's radio messages to the drivers over recent years
There are a large number of changes that Ferrari needs to go back to winning ways. With Hamilton there, having had such a period of dominance with Mercedes, he is the perfect driver help Ferrari implement the changes they need.. How the team managed to refocus after a setback, how they could communicate in a way that benefited everyone in the team, and help highlight the things that aren't working so well. but it doesn't look like Ferrari wants any advice. Instead, they're happy to stick to their old ways, which haven't worked in a number of years. Hopefully, at some point, Ferrari will realise that change is necessary if they want to win any kind of championship. Repeating the same things over and over again will not produce the results that Maranello so badly wants. But we'll have to wait and see if they manage to.