Ferrari has been left with “no way out” of its struggles at Formula 1’s Singapore Grand Prix despite Charles Leclerc trying a “stupid” experiment.
Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc ended up sixth and seventh in Q3 in Singapore, never looking like they had the pace to challenge Mercedes, Red Bull or McLaren.
Hamilton, the faster Ferrari driver for the first time since Silverstone, was over half a second adrift of polesitter Russell.
Both drivers were chasing the lack of pace throughout practice and qualifying, but never found the answer, even via an unorthodox Leclerc experiment for Q3.
Leclerc explained: “We never found the solution, unfortunately. Kind of tried to find consistency in that car through the whole weekend and there was no way out.
“At the end in Q3 I just said 'OK, let's try something a little bit stupid with the front wing’, try[ing] to rotate the car, anyway its unpredictable with understeer, will still be unpredictable with oversteer [after the wing change] but at least I prefer that.
"Managed to do a good lap on the scrubbed [tyres], then put the new [tyre on] and the feeling was completely different.
“So, yeah, I didn't find my way around.”
Leclerc confirmed he added “more front wing, but it didn’t really help anything” on the final Q3 run.
He said it was “very surprising” to be struggling so much and continues a worrying trend from Baku.
“Whether it's Baku or Singapore, these are two of my favourite tracks,” Leclerc explained.
“This season I've been performing particularly well and as a team we've performed particularly well and these last two weekends have been off pace.”
Leclerc added “it's not a nice feeling that when you put a really good lap in, you are P6, P7, when you do a small mistake in Q1, you are out in Q1, and this is a kind of situation we're in at the moment and it's not something that I enjoy, but it's a situation where anyway I need to give my best and try to bring back the team to the top”.
He admitted “he’s less hopeful” about Ferrari’s chances of winning a race after a qualifying as lacklustre as this one.
Where Ferrari can improve
While Ferrari’s stuck with the SF-25 it has right now, Hamilton believes Ferrari can still make improvements to the way it manages qualifying sessions.
He feels Ferrari isn’t optimising the way it approaches F1’s under-the-radar pitlane battle - something The Race detailed at length prior to the Singapore GP.
All teams fight hard for the correct position in the pitlane queue during qualifying, with critical implications for tyre temperature and outlap preparation.
Every car has unique demands, with the 2025 Ferrari particularly sensitive to warming up the tyres and has been caught out by that multiple times this season.
“The car's been feeling good generally, most of the weekend. Ultimately disappointed with that result,” Hamilton said.
“So Q1, the car was feeling good, tyres were feeling good. And then when we get into the next session, Q2 run one was fairly decent, but we are the last in the queue often and then waiting in the queue and losing a lot of temperature in the tyres and every time we do that, then we're just falling further and further back.
“And it happens every weekend.”
Hamilton even questioned whether Ferrari sees the problem as much as he does.
“It has, but I don't know whether or not they see it, so much,” Hamilton said when asked by The Race if it was hanging over the team.
“But we're losing so much temperature. And maybe you know, 5°C or 6°C, whatever it is, it's still a lot of temperature and it's really hard to gain that back in the outlap without using the tyre so much, which we often do.
“And we're just starting the lap...I think the guys that are on pole, they went out quicker, [with] I think, less waiting in the pitlane.
“So I think that's an area we can improve on, for sure. And I think naturally you've seen Red Bull had an upgrade; you've seen, I think, Mercedes have found something. And we haven't.
“So we're just fighting with what we have. Everyone's trying so hard, but it's definitely disappointing to finish what we are today when there was potential to potentially be higher.”
