Saudi GP Offers Ferrari Some Hope, Despite Lewis Hamilton’s Struggles

Ferrari emerged from the Saudi Arabia desert with more questions than answers on Sunday, but also with a slim sense of renewed optimism.

Let’s start with the latter. Charles Leclerc finished third to claim his and the Scuderia’s first podium on the season after an impressive first stint allowed him to run on medium tyres until Lap 29, longer than anybody else.

Coupled with Lewis Hamilton’s seventh place, the Monegasque’s podium finish allowed Ferrari to close the gap to Red Bull in the constructors’ standings to 11 points, after Max Verstappen finished second and Yuki Tsunoda was forced to retire.

The problem for the Prancing Horse is that Mercedes and McLaren are already 33 and 110 points ahead, respectively.

This, plainly, wasn’t in the script for Ferrari, who finished last season as the second-fastest car in the grid and missed out on a first constructors’ title in 16 years to McLaren by a mere 14 points.

The Italian marque entered 2025 as a team on the up, a notion which has been put to be in the first five races of the season.

Prior to his podium in Jeddah, Leclerc had finished eighth in Australia and fourth in both Japan and Bahrain. The 27-year-old finished fifth in the sprint in China, but was disqualified in the Grand Prix along with Hamilton.

“Obviously, there are answers in what we are doing, and we are doing something wrong, clearly. We’ve got to find it,” Leclerc said.

“We cannot lose too many races before finding it because we’re already 50 points down in the drivers’ championship. We’re not looking at it too much, but 50 points is a big number.

“I don’t want to be losing more points than that in the next few races.”

Leclerc finished on the podium seven times in the final 10 races of last season, but has been wrestling with an underperforming car so far this term and his fifth in the drivers’ standings, 52 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri.

Ferrari’s upgrades not enough to close the gap

Ferrari’s lack of pace has been most evident in qualifying this season. Leclerc qualified fourth in Jeddah with Hamilton seventh, continuing a familiar trend.

The Monegasque started eighth on the grid in Australia with the Briton in ninth, before the duo qualified sixth and fifth in China.

Leclerc started from fourth in Japan with Hamilton in eighth, while in Bahrain the former secured his first front row of the season as the seven-time world champion languished in ninth.

Ferrari brought in upgrades in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, but Leclerc remained 0.376 seconds slower than Verstappen’s pole-position lap.

And while he admitted the Scuderia hasn’t closed the gap as it had hoped, Leclerc suggested there was room for optimism as he said he has “found the sweet spot of the car that matches my driving style”.

Which is more than Hamilton can say.

The Briton cut a gloomy figure in the paddock after finishing seventh, 31 seconds behind his teammate.

“Nothing positive to take from today, apart from Charles on the podium, which is great for the team,” Hamilton said.

“It was horrible, not enjoyable at all. I was just sliding around. It’s pretty bad.”

Hamilton won the sprint race in Shanghai, but his best result in a full Grand Prix so far is his fifth place in Bahrain last week.

The seven-time world champion is seventh in the championship standings, a whopping 68 points behind Piastri and seven behind rookie Kimi Antonelli, who replaced him at Mercedes.

Why Lewis Hamilton is struggling

Hamilton’s lack of feeling for the SF-25 can partly be explained by the fact he’s coming to grips with what is all for intents and purposes a completely new environment.

In his 18-year career in Formula 1, the seven-time world champion has only ever driven cars fitted with Mercedes engines – first at McLaren and then at Mercedes.

While Ferrari uses the same 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrids engines as their competitors, the controls that manage the complicated recovery systems are slightly different for each team.

Worryingly for him and the team, Hamilton admitted his struggles are likely to continue for the foreseeable.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll struggle for but it’s definitely painful. Just going to try and improve from week to week,” he said on Sunday.

“At the moment there is no fix so this is how it’s going to be for the rest or the year. It’s going to be painful.

“In qualifying it’s me extracting performance and in the race I tried everything and the car just didn’t want to go any quicker.”

This is not the start to life at Maranello Hamilton imagined when he made a shock exit from Mercedes to join Ferrari in the hope of winning a record eighth world title in the famous red.

What’s more, with Leclerc steadily improving, the pressure on the Briton’s shoulders is only going to increase over the coming weeks should the gap from his teammate widen any further.

Saudi Arabia offered glimmers of hope, but Ferrari’s season remains a tangled mess for now.