Leclerc's fury exposes Ferrari as serious title contenders

It was all looking good for Ferrari. Charles Leclerc took a stunning pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix and then appeared to have the pace to keep the McLarens behind him for much of the first half of Sunday's race.

Yet the Monegasque driver finished over 42 seconds behind race winner Lando Norris, all the way down in fourth, while his team-mate Lewis Hamilton struggled to make any impression on the top 10, and finished 12th.

While Hamilton's dismal weekend can half be blamed on the pace of the Ferrari car, the failure from Leclerc to finish on the podium can be largely blamed on Ferrari, and their car and driver struggles display precisely why they are not a serious championship-challenging outfit.

And Leclerc knows it.

2024 may have given him hope that the team were on the right course to win their first championship of any kind since 2008, but 2025 has been dismal.

And as the promising start at the Hungaroring fizzled out to another average result for the team, Leclerc pleaded with his team to listen to his concerns, citing that he could have done a better job of managing issues with his SF-25.

"This is so incredibly frustrating," Leclerc said over team radio on lap 54. "We have lost all competitiveness, you just have to listen to me.

"I would have found a different way of managing those issues. Now it's just undriveable. It's a miracle if we finish on the podium."

Was it a change in his car balance? Was it a genuine mechanical issue? That has not come to the fore just yet, but either way Leclerc felt like his team should have listened to his concerns.

As it was, Ferrari had a chassis problem to hide behind, which the Monegasque admitted post-race had played a large part in his Sunday decline unbeknown to him on the track.

Ferrari need radical change

On Saturday, Leclerc's pole position covered up an embarrassing afternoon for the Scuderia.

It was Leclerc himself who defied Ferrari's 'plan A' strategy and told his team not to worry about anything other than making sure that he was out of the garage as early as possible, to try and avoid the traffic.

That self-prescribed strategy was arguably what gave Leclerc the chance to secure pole, with the 27-year-old once again outperforming the capabilities of his SF-25.

On top of this, Ferrari also had their seven-time world champion driver Hamilton suggesting that they should replace him, in an incredibly downbeat interview in which he described himself as 'useless'.

While Hamilton should be commended for his honesty, it's clear that Ferrari are not exactly filling their star signing with the confidence he needs to perform, and he sits a distant sixth in the drivers' championship.

These driver problems are on top of the clear problems that the team have with their 2025 car, and Ferrari are yet to have won a single grand prix in 2025.

Yet Fred Vasseur has been given a new contract!

It's laughable to say the least, and the pressure on the Frenchman's position earlier in the year was completely justifiable.

With new regulations sweeping into the sport in 2026, it is crucial that Ferrari instil confidence in their drivers once again throughout the remainder of 2025, or they may risk both of them looking elsewhere following that particular season.

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