A year ago, Ferrari’s Italian Grand Prix victory kickstarted its very promising end to the 2024 season - being followed by two more wins, a late surge towards McLaren in the constructors’ championship and plenty of reasons for hope going into 2025.
This year’s Monza letdown bodes much worse for the rest of Ferrari’s current season.
Monza 2025 was not the dream grand prix Ferrari and its tifosi wanted, the SF-25 failing to reach the podium. Pulling off a strategic triumph as it did with Charles Leclerc in 2024 was not possible with no tyre degradation in the one-stop race that Max Verstappen and Red Bull controlled so excellently.
The Monza circuit had characteristics that should have suited Ferrari’s SF-25, but in the end, the performance fell short of expectations and fourth was the highest achievable position.
The 'trimmed' wing
At Monza, Red Bull brought a new floor, which was used on Verstappen’s victorious car, and other teams such as Racing Bulls and McLaren also introduced updated components. For Ferrari, a carry-over of the rear wing used on the SF-24 for the 2024 Monza win had been planned.
The decision to carry over the rear wings had already been made during the design phase of the SF-25, when Enrico Cardile was still technical director. The aerodynamics department, led by Diego Tondi, worked on the 2024 wings, reinforcing them to adapt to the new technical directives and flexion tests.
On the 2025 car, the medium-downforce rear wing was the only one to undergo a significant re-style, adopting a ‘V-shape’ main plane, providing the best compromise between downforce and drag compared to 2024. The Monza rear wing was used with a trimmed movable flap, making the car faster on the straights with DRS closed compared to 2024.
However, during the Italian weekend, there were some set-up issues on Friday related to braking stability. With the recently updated rear suspension, the car is still in a partial learning phase, and at Monza, it did not respond exactly as the team initially expected, forcing it to optimise the set-up differently for Saturday.
Monza was the first major test of the car’s braking behaviour with the new suspension, which did not help achieve a perfect Friday set-up.
Based on the information we have, the option to use the trimmed rear wing was not the first choice, mainly because it sacrificed cornering speed through the Lesmo turns and the Ascari chicane.
The trackside team later decided to go with the trimmed DRS configuration for both Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. This decision was made quite quickly as soon as the first comparison between the two solutions was carried out in FP1.
The goal was to maximise qualifying performance – a weak point of the SF-25 – and make the cars harder to overtake during the race. However, performance on both fronts was below expectations. Ferrari's plan to make an against-the-odds home win viable had failed.
No more upgrades
If Ferrari’s 2025 grand prix win tally stays stuck on zero, that negative record would put the SF-25 on par with disastrous seasons like 2014 and 2016.
In a championship with 24 races – one of the longest calendars ever – this statistic becomes even more painful. The numbers, however, do not tell the whole story. McLaren’s superiority this year has surprised the competition, but at the moment Ferrari is the only top team not to have won a race, except for the sprint in China.
We know that the 2025 Ferrari was completely replaced by the 2026 model in the windtunnel from early summer, specifically since mid-June, one month earlier than originally planned. Development on the SF-25 would have continued later if Ferrari had been in contention for the championship.
For this reason, there will be no further 2025 performance upgrades developed in the windtunnel. Currently, there are no plans to spend any of the remaining budget cap even on CFD-only developments, and only track-specific components will be introduced.
The performance upgrades that had been scheduled for September have been cancelled. Baku next weekend is a low-downforce circuit where Ferrari has historically performed well, and the team will have to count on making the most of the package it has.
The car for next year, according to our information, is about 70% complete.
In Maranello, work on the aerodynamic development of the main components will continue until November. A basic chassis and the suspensions are already defined, for the first time under the technical guidance of Loic Serra.
