It has been another headline-filled season for Ferrari, with seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton arriving, scrutiny over a planned title bid that did not materialise, and team boss Fred Vasseur subsequently having to navigate a barrage of speculation about his future. So, where do the legendary team stand at the summer break? Here is their half term report…
Best finish
Charles Leclerc – 2nd in Monaco
Ferrari came agonisingly close to ending their title drought (which stretches back to 2008) last season, with just 14 points separating them and World Champions McLaren after the Abu Dhabi finale – but momentum was building and hopes were high for 2025.
As it has transpired, though, Ferrari are without a Grand Prix win across 14 weekends so far, while McLaren turned an already super-competitive package into an even stronger one to bag 11 victories between Australia and Hungary and leave scraps for their rivals.
It means Charles Leclerc’s run to second on home soil in Monaco marks Ferrari’s best Sunday result, ahead of four more of his own podium finishes – not including the Sprint sessions and Hamilton’s breakthrough pole position/victory double in China.
Qualifying head-to-head
Leclerc 10-4 Hamilton
Leclerc was out of the spotlight over the winter, given all the attention and focus on Hamilton’s blockbuster switch from Mercedes, but it is the Monegasque who has comfortably led the Ferrari intra-team battle over both one lap and a race distance up to this point.
Going “more extreme” with the SF-25’s set-up early in the season, as he explored every possible way of cutting the gap to pace-setters McLaren, Leclerc was only out-qualified by Hamilton once across their first eight main grid-deciding sessions as team mates.
Hamilton appeared to turn a corner mid-season with a car he has often found to be “on a knife-edge”, starting ahead of Leclerc in three out of four races, before Q2 and Q1 exits in Belgium and Hungary (where Leclerc claimed pole) triggered his “useless” comments.
Race head-to-head
Leclerc 11-2 Hamilton*
Leclerc’s advantage is even bigger on paper when it comes to race days, having lost out to his new team mate across a Grand Prix just twice – when Hamilton finished fourth on Ferrari’s home soil at Imola and bagged another P4 finish on his home turf at Silverstone.
It is, of course, worth noting that 2025 marks Leclerc’s seventh year in the same environment, having stepped up to Ferrari after his debut 2018 season with Sauber, while Hamilton has had all sorts to get used to on and off the track since arriving at Maranello in January.
“It was a huge change for Lewis in terms of culture, in terms of people around him, in terms of software, in terms of car, in terms of every single topic,” Team Principal Vasseur recently told F1.com, adding that he and Hamilton perhaps “underestimated” the challenge.
*No mark included for the Chinese Grand Prix, from which both drivers were disqualified
Best moment
Around those struggles, Hamilton has shown flashes of the driver who has scored more poles and wins than anyone else in F1 history, and who is tied with Michael Schumacher for the most world titles achieved – the task now being to unlock that pace consistently.
Back in March, Hamilton and the SF-25 suddenly clicked at the Shanghai International Circuit en route to P1 in Sprint Qualifying and the Sprint itself – landing an emotional maiden Ferrari victory and arguably achieving the team’s best moment of 2025 so far.
Worst moment
Sadly for Hamilton and Ferrari, the following day’s Grand Prix in China represented a thud back to Earth, with the Briton and Leclerc – who had already lost some ground in the main Qualifying session – being disqualified from respective P5 and P6 finishes.
Hamilton was excluded after post-race checks found that his car had exceeded plank wear limits, while Leclerc suffered the same fate due to his being underweight, ending what had been an otherwise morale-boosting weekend in painful circumstances.
Leclerc’s pole-to-P4 slump in Hungary also made a late shout to be included on the list – the elation of that result turning to huge frustration when his victory push got derailed by an unspecified car problem and ultimately left him more than 40 seconds adrift.
Going forward
As mentioned during the introduction of this half term report, Ferrari had their eyes fixed on a championship challenge heading into the 2025 campaign, but those hopes were soon dashed thanks to McLaren’s imperious speed and consistency.
Around the time of the Canadian Grand Prix, Italian media outlets started to report that Vasseur – who joined Ferrari in 2023 – was on shaky ground, a situation the Frenchman described as “disrespectful” to the team, and one he moved on from to pen a new deal.
Now, with McLaren boasting more than double the points of their nearest rivals, Vasseur and Ferrari’s readjusted target is simple: build on recent updates, secure P2 in the Teams’ Championship over Mercedes and Red Bull and nail the 2026 rules reset.
“Everybody in the company is aligned on this project,” Vasseur insisted before the summer break. “This is probably the best feeling when you have a goal and everybody is convinced that we can achieve it, we can go for it, and we are all pushing in the same direction.
“It’s not a secret that Ferrari want to win again, but we have a target, and the goal is very, very clear. We’ll put everything [in] to achieve it. We did a decent step forward everywhere, but now we need perhaps a bit more time to put everything together, and the 2026 challenge [is] a good opportunity.”
