Hamilton and Leclerc Blame Ferrari's Focus on 2026 for Nightmare of a 2025 Season

Scuderia Ferrari’s difficult 2025 Formula 1 season reached a new low in the Qatar Grand Prix—an accomplishment that did not seem possible just a couple of races after both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton retired with accident damage in Brazil, drawing controversial commentary from Ferrari chairman John Elkann.

At least on that occasion, Leclerc was in the fight for a top three result before he was hit by Kimi Antonelli. That race also came in the slipstream of podium finishes in Austin and Mexico. The car was simply uncompetitive in Qatar. Leclerc started and finishing the sprint in P13 after going off track on lap one, and then salvaging P8 from a P10 grid spot in Sunday’s main event. It was an even more disappointing weekend for Hamilton, with P17 and P12 finishes in the two races.

For a team still theoretically in the fight for second place in the constructors’ championship, it was a total disaster. It was clear throughout the weekend that both drivers were fighting just to stay on the road, and the red cars seemed visibly difficult to drive in on-board footage. Pierre Gasly, who followed Hamilton in the sprint, even told him how tricky the SF-25 had looked up ahead.

Leclerc did at least score four points on Sunday, but he was clearly not happy after the race. “I had no confidence in the car, had no pace in the car, I had nothing in the car,” he said when Road & Track asked him about his evening. “So I'm quite glad the weekend is over, to be honest. It was a very frustrating race from the very first lap to the very last lap."

"After what happened yesterday in the first lap, I had no confidence, and I didn't know what was going to happen with the car in the first few laps. But there's not been one lap where we've been competitive over the weekend."

There are many factors at play in Ferrari’s 2025 form. In the case of Qatar, matters were not helped by a power steering issue early in the weekend. The high tire pressures mandated by Pirelli for safety reasons also seemed to hamper the team more than its rivals, and left the team confused on setup.

At least in the opinions of both drivers, however, the key factor remains the fact that the aero development tap for the 2025 car was turned off as early as April in order to focus on the new project for 2026. While everyone else had to make a similar compromise and balance out the use of scarce resources—wind tunnel time and CFD usage as controlled by the FIA’s aero testing regulations—Ferrari went more extreme than most in abandoning development on the current car so early.

Leclerc is adamant that the decision has had an impact: "A lot, for sure,” he said. “And that's why I think the second half is not a surprise that it's a lot harder compared to our competitors... I really hope that this will pay off for next year, as obviously, this was done the with the vision of trying to work harder for next year, and having all our resources trying to anticipate next year."

After his equally frustrating Qatar weekend, Hamilton expressed a similar view. "I think it really highlighted just how developed everybody else is," he said, "and how undeveloped we are at this point of the year.”

Inevitably, their comments put a focus on the decision to focus early on 2026, which ultimately was made by team principal Fred Vasseur. While accepting that the strategy has indeed had consequences, he insisted that there were also specific circumstances at play in Qatar that made things look worse.

"At the end of the day, we don't have to mix everything,” he said. “Because two races ago, we were on the podium; Mexico, Austin, we were on the podium. It means that it's not just about development. The others, they didn't develop between Austin and today.”

“I think that this weekend, we struggled a lot with the setup, and probably also linked to the prescription of the tire pressure, and we struggled from lap one to the last lap of the race. It was probably a bit better today [in the grand prix], but marginally," he added. "We're in a tough situation.”

Vasseur still believes that the team made the right call for the long term. In effect, he decided early on that McLaren could not be toppled this season, and that it would be better to switch focus and be ready to have a stronger package in 2026. “At the end of the day, when we decided to move [to concentrate] on '26, it means that we were not confident to be able to catch McLaren,” he said. “It was the rationale behind the decision, and I think, honestly today, it was a good decision."

"What I underestimated probably personally is the fact that when you know that you won't develop the car, it's more difficult to keep everybody... motivated is not the right word, but, with expectation, I would say. And this is important.”

The counter-argument to Ferrari's focus-on-2026 decision is that Red Bull was also humbled by McLaren at the start of this year, but having continued to improve the RB21 in the wind tunnel for as long as it dared, the team heads to the final race in contention for the drivers’ title.

The problem for Vasseur in trying to defend the choice to focus on 2026 is that, in the wake of a tough race like Qatar, the drivers were not on the same page as he was. He accepts that they speak from the heart in the heat of the moment.

“When you are going to the TV pen, it's an emotional comment. That's life, and I perfectly understand the emotion," Vasseur said. Likewise, he added, when the drivers speak on the radio about how much energy they're putting into the weekend. "Honestly, they are pushing. Charles in the radio at the end of the race [said] that—I push like hell from lap one of Friday morning to a Friday afternoon to the last lap of the race. I think he was probably pushing more than on some weekends when he won races."

But Vasseur remains adamant that Qatar was a perfect storm of negative factors, and that there’s still a chance to bounce back in Abu Dhabi this weekend with the same car. “As a team, we have to stay in our bubble and to try to get the best from what we have,” he said. “For sure, you have to deal with this kind of situation. But Max was able to do it. He was beaten in quali in Budapest, he was P11 in the race, and then he started to win races. It means that you can come back."

Key to Ferrari's chances in the final race, he said, would be understanding what went wrong in Qatar. "From my understanding so far, it's linked to the tire pressure," he said. "We were a bit like on a balloon all the weekend! And we struggled to deal with. But it's the same for everybody. It means that we did a worse job than the others.”

Leclerc—still a glass-half-full man despite his difficult year, remains somewhat optimistic about the season finale. “I want to get it out of the way, in a positive way," he said. "And I just want to do absolutely everything in order to extract whatever is left of our car, and hopefully jump on the podium one last time this year."

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