Ferrari’s best and worst moments from 2025 and driver head-to-heads

At the start of 2025 much was expected of Ferrari. Seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton had been signed, and the talk was of an expected title bid after the Scuderia pushed McLaren all the way for the 2024 Teams’ Championship. However, that didn’t materialise. Instead, Ferrari dropped to fourth in the standings, failed to claim a Grand Prix victory and Hamilton was unable to record a podium finish for the first time in his illustrious F1 career. With the team’s focus switching to 2026 earlier than expected, here’s Ferrari’s end of year report…

Best finish

Charles Leclerc – 2nd in Monaco and Mexico City

As touched on above, Ferrari were just 14 points behind winners McLaren in the 2024 Teams’ Championship. The hopes were high that the momentum would continue into 2025, particularly with the all-star driver line-up of Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

However, Ferrari went without a Grand Prix win across the entire season. While Hamilton did record victory in the China Sprint, Leclerc would take the team’s best Grand Prix results of the season with second in both Monaco and Mexico. Overall, there were seven podiums for Leclerc in 2025, but the Monegasque will have hoped for much more at the start of the year.

In contrast Hamilton has yet to record a podium finish for Ferrari – but he came agonisingly close with fourth in Imola, Austria, Silverstone and Austin.

Qualifying head-to-head

Leclerc 19-5 Hamilton

Qualifying has been a struggle for Hamilton in 2025 as he continues to get used to life at Ferrari after so many successful years at Mercedes. The end of the season was particularly painful as his Q1 exit in Abu Dhabi was the third consecutive time he exited at the first hurdle – and the fourth if you include Sprint Qualifying from Qatar.

Leclerc had some starring moments in Qualifying this season as he comfortably led the head-to-head score, the most notable being his shock pole in Hungary – a result that left him as baffled as everyone else. “Today I don’t understand anything at Formula 1!” he said immediately afterwards.

He would also claim seven further top-three Qualifying results (third in Bahrain, Belgium, Austin and Sao Paulo and second in Monaco, Austria and Mexico) but, by his lofty standards, he has also found it tough to tame the SF-25 at various times.

Race head-to-head

Leclerc 18-3 Hamilton*

Leclerc also comes out on top in the race head-to-head with his seven-time World Champion team mate, ultimately finishing the season with 242 points to Hamilton’s 156 points (the pair were fifth and sixth respectively in the final Drivers’ Championship standings).

Of course, it is fair to mention that 2025 was the Monegasque’s seventh season at the Scuderia, while Hamilton has been getting used to his new surroundings all year.

Additionally, while Leclerc did notch up seven podiums, Hamilton had several strong recovery drives to bounce back from his Qualifying hiccups. Twelfth to fourth in Imola, and 19th to eighth in Las Vegas are two examples of the places he was able to make up on race day. Should the Briton iron out those struggles over one lap then stronger results are likely to follow.

*No scores are awarded for the Chinese GP as both drivers were disqualified, and the Dutch GP and the Sao Paulo GP as both drivers retired.

Best moment

Despite a challenging season, Hamilton did produce what we’re crowning as Ferrari’s best moment from 2025 – when everything clicked in Shanghai as he won the Sprint in just the second round of the season, having also secured Sprint pole on the Friday.

No doubt the seven-time World Champion will be chasing many more moments like that in the team’s famous red.

Worst moment

While double DNFs in Zandvoort and Sao Paulo come close, we’re still branding what happened the day after that Sprint win as Ferrari’s worst moment from 2025.

While the Briton and Leclerc had lost ground in the Grand Prix to finish sixth and fifth respectively, those points were soon taken away in their entirety with the duo both disqualified. Hamilton was excluded after post-race checks found his car had exceeded plank wear limits, while Leclerc’s car was found to be underweight.

What could have been a morale-boosting weekend ended painfully and rather set the tone for the rest of the year.

Goals for 2026

Ferrari ended 2025 fourth in the teams’ standings, down two places on their 2024 finish. But the biggest gauge as to how far the Scuderia dropped off was their gap to McLaren – 14 points in 2024, which ballooned to 435 in 2025.

As with every team up and down the grid, the new regulations for 2026 offers the chance for a reset, and team boss Fred Vasseur made the decisive decision to switch focus early on this year as it became apparent they would not be challenging McLaren at the sharp end.

“McLaren was so dominating in the first four or five events that we realised it would be very difficult for 2025,” Vasseur said. “It meant that we decided very early in the season – I think it was the end of April – to switch to ’26.

“It was a tough call. Perhaps I also underestimated a little bit the call on the psychological side, because when you still have 20 races to go, or 18 races to go, and you know that you won’t bring any aero development, it’s quite tough to manage psychologically.”

While that goes some way to explaining Ferrari’s year, that decision will only have paid off if they start 2026 well and are closer to the front than they have been.

And there’s also the Hamilton factor to consider, with the Briton still getting used to life at Maranello to a certain extent. Providing a driver that holds a joint-record seven titles with the tools to flourish is another must – and Ferrari will be able to fully reap the benefits of that all-star driver line-up they have.