Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari F1 team given nightmare blast by Italian media

Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari team given nightmare blast by Italian media

Lewis Hamilton's time at Ferrari has not gone smoothly

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Wednesday 8 October 2025 19:52

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Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari F1 team have been handed a dire assessment in Italian media following last weekend's Singapore Grand Prix.

Prior to Hamilton's arrival at the outfit, the Scuderia were engrossed in a tight battle with Red Bull to become runners-up in the constructors' championship.

Ferrari managed to secure second place in the standings after the 2024 season finale thanks to the year-long efforts of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, but with just six rounds left in the 2025 campaign, the squad are languishing down in third.

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What's even more concerning is the fact that Red Bull, who have been largely relying on Max Verstappen alone for their points this season, are now just eight points behind Ferrari, with a fourth place finish not out of the question for Hamilton's team.

Following yet another weekend of mediocre results for the Maranello-based outfit, Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport have claimed Ferrari are in the midst of a 'horror year'.

Ferrari issues go 'beyond race weekend'

It is no doubt that the Italian F1 team are suffering from a tricky period in the sport, but Gazzetta have stated that these problems have now spread beyond poor car management across race weekends.

The report from the Italian publication read: "From rumours gathered, a different reality would seem to have emerged. We mean to say that it is not just poor management of the car over the weekend in terms of set-up changes that is the underlying cause of the repeated lacklustre performances on Saturday and Sunday, after a promising start to the weekend, but rather the intrinsic characteristics of the SF-25 design, which are paradoxically even more accentuated after the introduction of the modified rear suspension in Belgium."

After Hamilton's one-off sprint victory at the Chinese GP, Ferrari's technical director Loic Serra chose to focus on improving the car's suspension instead of the aerodynamic development, with the work reportedly taking up months of the team's valuable time.

It is this error that Gazzetta feels has hampered Ferrari's 2025 challenger, with Italian F1 technical journalist Paul Filisetti writing: "The development work actually took the Scuderia's technical staff about three months, effectively blocking the aerodynamic evolution of the SF-25 and concentrating most of the available resources, including time.

"The main objective was to make the aerodynamics of the SF-25 less sensitive to changes in ground clearance. In part, it is fair to say that this has been achieved, but with a not insignificant side effect. In fact, it would appear that the car has gradually become less sensitive to setup variations. In other words, when arriving at a track with the setup deliberately chosen on the simulator, if it coincides with the track conditions in terms of grip and temperatures, it is possible to extract the maximum possible performance from the SF-25. On the other hand, when conditions change, the SF-25 is unable to adapt, even if the setup is modified."

The nightmare diagnosis from the publication also claimed that some in the sport believed that if Ferrari had instead focused on the aerodynamic developments, it would have been more effective in granting the wishes of Hamilton and Leclerc, who have both been vocal about their struggles with this year's machinery.

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Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

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