Charles Leclerc declared that Ferrari are now ‘solidly’ the fourth-fastest team on the Formula One grid, behind McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, predicting a ‘long end to the season’ for the Italian constructor. This is bad news for Lewis Hamilton, who is still searching for his first podium with the Scuderia.
The Singapore Grand Prix was another weekend to forget for Fred Vasseur’s squad. Ferrari arrived at the Marina Bay Street Circuit with aspirations of fighting for a race victory, but qualified fifth and sixth, well behind the top three teams. Then, on Sunday, things unravelled further.
After a promising end to the race on soft compound tyres, Hamilton suffered a major brake issue. He was forced to limp around the track for the final couple of laps, bleeding lap time at an alarming rate and cutting corners in an attempt to stay out of the wall.
He crossed the line just four-tenths of a second ahead of eighth-placed Fernando Alonso, but was relegated behind the Aston Martin driver after the stewards applied a five-second time penalty. Leclerc, meanwhile, suffered from the same issue to a lesser extent.
Assessing the state of the team after a difficult weekend, Leclerc told Sky Sports F1: “I was expecting more pace for the rest of the race, which was not the case. Unfortunately, we are now the fourth team and solidly the fourth team.
“Quite far behind the top three. Mercedes managed to do the same step that Red Bull did five, six races ago, four races ago, whatever… and now they’ve managed to do that step. We didn’t manage to do that, so it is going to be a long end of the season.”
Hamilton is still hunting for his first podium in Ferrari colours with six races remaining of the 2025 season. The Brit has already captured the unwanted record of the most Grands Prix with the Scuderia without a top-three finish, although his sprint victory in Shanghai serves as at least one notable highlight from his first year in red.
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Asked if he was suffering from the same issue as Hamilton, Leclerc explained: “Oh, not [just] to the end – it had been like that from lap seven or lap eight of the race, so I had to manage a lot, and for sure there is some lap time in it.
“However, I don’t want to blame it on that because it is a track where everybody has to manage the brake to some extent – I think Lewis and I probably a lot more than the others – and we paid the price for it.
“And I think also the fact that maybe Lewis, having more grip with the new tyres, was pushing more on the brakes, as is always the case, and that puts him in a very difficult situation. Because when you have the grip and you see the P5, you try everything to get there, but the brake couldn’t handle that.”