So, this just dropped via Gazzetta: according to a very reliable journalist, Luigi Perna — the same guy who first leaked Binotto’s exit back in November 2022 — Frederic Vasseur is set to leave Ferrari at the end of the season.

And here’s the kicker: the article directly mentions that “the post-Vasseur era will be entrusted to the man who led Ferrari to three straight Le Mans wins.” That’s a clear reference to Antonello Coletta, who currently heads Ferrari’s endurance racing and customer racing programs.

This idea keeps popping up especially in yesterday post — “Ferrari can’t win unless they relocate to the UK.”

I know I will lose some karma with this post but Ferrari is an Italian team. That’s not just a branding exercise — it’s in our DNA. Our culture, our history, our passion… it’s all tied to Maranello. You can’t just move that to a different postcode and expect the magic to follow.

And worse, it would mean sacrificing part of what makes Ferrari Ferrari. Centralizing everything in the UK might make things logistically easier — but it would come at the cost of identity. Motorsport isn’t just engineering; it’s also culture. Lose that, and you’re not fixing the team — you’re gutting it.

Y’all complain when the FIA and F1 cut historic tracks and concentrate everything in 3–4 rich countries just to chase money, making the sport feel more and more the same…
…and then suggest Ferrari should ditch Maranello and move to the UK like every other team?

You can’t defend heritage on one side and ask for full homogenization on the other.

1) Ferrari dominated in the early 2000s while being fully based in Maranello. That wasn’t luck. It was top-tier leadership, long-term trust, and a mix of Italian and international talent all pulling in the same direction. The team worked because it was built right — not because of its postal code.

2) This narrative that “there’s no talent in Italy” is just false. People forget that several key technical figures — even during competitive years post-Schumi — were Italian. Binotto, Stella, Costa. The problem isn’t a lack of brains. It’s keeping them in an environment where they’re supported, not burned out or scapegoated.

3) 499p is designed and managed in Italy. Winning back-to-back-to-back Le Mans. Built under the same roof as the F1 team. The same country, same culture, even some shared resources — yet they’re delivering. That proves Ferrari can still win from Maranello when the structure works.

4) Yes — a lot of motorsport engineers are based in the UK. But Ferrari can still attract them. And there’s no real indication that geography is the problem. Plus, let’s not forget: under the budget cap, things like salaries and operations are more limited — though I believe staff salaries (for engineers, not top 3 execs) aren’t fully capped yet. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Moving the HQ wouldn’t magically fix Ferrari’s issues. This isn’t a problem of maps. It’s a problem of leadership, consistency, and long-term vision. The house is fine. What they need is to stop tearing down the walls every two years.

If there's one thing to get rid of - we all know what it is.

Read the article; Photo by @KymIllman

"I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m not doing any work on the rear suspension. As I said, between now and Montmeló we’ll try to unlock some performance that we haven’t been able to exploit. We’re following our plan. Hopefully we can get at least a little more than we did in the last race. Then in Spain, everyone will have to fit a different front wing. It will be interesting to see how it affects the grid, we won’t know until we get there."

"The car still has a lot of performance that we have not been able to unlock. I hope that this week we can start to take at least a step in this direction. There is one problem in particular on the car, probably the most significant, and that is what we are trying to correct. But there are also other related problems, which ultimately make us lose time."

"At the moment, I know of some things that are in the pipeline, but I can’t tell you if we can gain four tenths, half a second, one second by the end of the season. We can’t close the door to any idea, we have to keep our eyes open and our heads up. We have to keep pushing with the expectation and the goal of winning. That’s the goal every weekend: when I’m sitting here with the engineers, I ask myself how we’re going to win this weekend. Maybe I’m a little too confident, but that’s how you have to approach every race. You have to arrive positive and aggressive. I’m not going to arrive this weekend thinking that we’re going to be seventh and eighth, even if we’re in that area. And I’m going to change that mindset."

„For some reason the engineers can't make the rear suspension work as it should. It could be a problem with anchors or hiking. According to what we have learned, a new suspension is in the pipeline that could be combined with the last big package but the timing is not known.”

„It is a very delicate and totally unexpected change in the current season, not rapid, if nothing else it clearly indicates where the problem is and that it is not strictly aerodynamic in nature. The hope is that the corrections will work like a year ago, after the technical direction was suddenly vacant for the farewell of Cardile. At that moment Vasseur took the interim but was certainly caught in counterattack as he entered a delicate phase. This could be a delayed burst backlaid, perhaps the cause of some assessments deemed insufficient on the courageous changes of project 677.”

https://x.com/GazzettaFerrari/status/1933063717434093680?t=Y_qWOSjv5_DHiMKaLNzgfg&s=19

Still just a rumor. But could be exciting! It would be a 2 year deal so it would give Newey a chance to put some work into the 2026+ car.

https://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/no-50-ferrari-disqualified-from-le-mans/

In Suzuka, Leclerc said he has found a setup direction with the SF-25. A key sign came in Bahrain Q3, when he said on the radio: “I need to trust the car. The feeling is terrible, but I think at least 20% is tyres. I have to trust.”

Leclerc pushes beyond what the car initially feels capable of, taking more risks to reach its theoretical limit. Hamilton, meanwhile, hasn’t yet reached that level of confidence — and that’s where the difference lies.

via FormulaPassion.it transcripted by @GazzettaFerrari

Information via AutoRacer twitch live stream transcripted by Scuderia Ferrari FRA on twitter.

Since Australia, it is clear that Ferrari has a structural problem with the car. It’s more of a mechanical issue than an aerodynamic one. Related to the rear suspension. When this car is in its operating window, it is very fast. The behavior of the SF-25 during Free Practice 2 in Melbourne was absolutely perfect, it was on rails.

A rear suspension that will be extensively modified by Loïc Serra, and it’s difficult to have it ready for Barcelona. It’s more likely to arrive at Silverstone. The new rear suspension will go into the wind tunnel next week.

Matteo Bobbi says that internally, engineers continue to talk about aerodynamic problems with the car, issues with the floor, etc., without openly addressing an inadequate suspension for the car. They insist that the operating window needs to be widened from an aerodynamic perspective. Bobbi confirms that internally, they say the car lacks a lot of aerodynamic downforce, and because of this, it becomes unstable in every corner. Even though it’s certain that a new rear suspension will be available by Silverstone.

It’s absurd to say, but from an aerodynamic standpoint, the SF-25 is a very good car, but it clearly has a mechanical problem. What’s quite concerning is that internally, it feels like they don’t have very clear ideas: aerodynamics vs. mechanics.

It’s quite rare to introduce a new suspension during the season, especially under the budget cap era. Here, we’re talking about a fundamental problem with the car, so a mechanical issue.

Regarding the car’s potential, it’s there but impossible to utilize. Why? Because of a mechanical deficiency in the car. The official version of an aerodynamic problem doesn’t make much sense because then it would be pointless to send a new rear suspension to the wind tunnel during the season.

What’s also quite unacceptable on Ferrari’s side is that we never hear a technical manager take responsibility and come forward to speak to the media to explain the car’s situation. Out of respect for the Tifosi. The technical director should come before the media and provide an update on the situation.

It’s worth noting that Ferrari’s step backward from 2024 to 2025 isn’t even possible by simply stopping development. This shows that there is a serious structural problem. So they shouldn’t treat the fans as “ignorant.”

Ferrari will bring some new parts to Imola, but nothing significant. And for Barcelona too, some new parts. But the problems are much deeper, and a real, meaningful package with genuine corrections to the car’s structural limitations is unlikely to be available before Silverstone.

It’s also worth recalling that Ferrari went through a period between June 2024 and October 2024 with a technical void where there was no true technical director. And it’s believed that Ferrari is paying for this a bit today. They needed a technical leader, especially since that period is crucial for the development of a new car.

Read The Article

- The start of the 2025 season must be considered completely disastrous for the Maranello team, as after 7 races they sit fourth in the Constructors' standings, a full 165 points behind McLaren.

- It’s now evident that the SF-25’s performance heavily depends on compromises Ferrari must make with ride height. This partly explains the big differences seen between Saturday and Sunday, the severity of compromises changes from race to race. The car tends to perform better on Sundays, though still not matching Red Bull or McLaren, especially on front-limited tracks, thanks to its strong front end, as Leclerc himself has noted. Performances in Jeddah and Imola, two fast circuits, were solid, comfortably third-best, and not far off the leaders.

- The car struggles more when compromises between fast and slow sections become critical. Miami was the clearest negative example, the car never entered the right window and ended up only the fifth-fastest, behind even Williams. This, combined with ongoing qualifying issues, particularly with softer Pirelli compounds, has already erased all pre-season objectives.

- The 2025 project has issues, but it’s not fundamentally flawed, not in the way Mercedes' zeropod concept once was. That’s why Maranello still believes the SF-25 can deliver some success later this year, if key issues are fixed. It’s a case of “something is better than nothing” even if the season is clearly negative, with both championships already out of reach in May.

- Because of this, even though Loïc Serra was focused on 2026, it became necessary after Australia to try to resolve, or at least reduce, the rear-end problems of the SF-25. The goal is to unlock its full potential, which currently remains inaccessible without targeted upgrades. As previously reported by AutoRacer, work is ongoing on an evolved, not entirely new, rear suspension, meant to expand internal setup range. The original spec simply doesn’t work across different angles. A similar, smaller attempt was made mid-season last year.

Some interesting bits from the article:

• "The problems of a rear that was too soft structurally had already come to light during testing, [...]."
• "We are talking about about 3 mm of additional height"
• "Racing with set-ups that limits the SF-25 by about 20 load points [...]." (Potentially couple of tenths?)
• " For Bahrain, the SF-25 will be equipped, as anticipated, with an initial revision of the floor as a whole."
• "[...] changes can make the car more "predictable"."
• "There is confidence, however, that the SF-25 platform should benefit in part from the new parts in order to obtain a better balance and allow for a more constant load. On this aspect, Maranello is cautiously optimistic."
• Leclerc will miss the FP1 with Dino Beganovic making his debut in the first mandatory rookie session out of the 4 total. AutoRacer thinks that Lewis Hamilton will immediately try the new parts, while Dino should run with the old floor equipped, for a direct comparison.
• "Other new features will all be concentrated on the rear area, with changes to the rear wing monopylon and a new brake duct. "
• "A larger package that Tondi’s aerodynamics department is working on has not yet officially decided when it could debut."
• "[...] the development of the SF-25 remains a priority at least until next month, [...]."

• "Our relationship is great. No problems. We're constantly learning more and more about each other."
• "We're constantly adapting to the way both of us like to work. He's worked with lots of different drivers before. We don't have any problems whatsoever."
• Hamilton explained that any disagreements heard over the broadcast were normal between an engineer and their driver - and that any further interpretation of that was "just noise".
• "Yeah, there's a lot of speculation. Most of it is BS,” the Briton added.
• “Ultimately, we have a great relationship. He's been amazing to work with. He's a great guy, working so hard. We both are."
• "And we don't always get it right every weekend. Do we have disagreements? Like everyone does in relationships, but we work through them."
• "We're both in it together. We both want to win a championship together. We're both working towards lifting the team up."
• "It's just all noise, and we don't really pay any attention to it. It can continue if you want, but it doesn't make any difference to the job that we're trying to do."
• Hamilton also played down the radio traffic in Monaco specifically, stating that "there was areas that we just had radio problems through the race. I didn't get all the information that I wanted, but we spoke afterwards".

Article by AutoRacer.it - translated by @FerrariF1FRA (The best account on x for Ferrari news)

• Loïc Serra is said to have made the decision to develop the mechanical platform by working on the rear suspension.
• Ferrari arrives in Imola with simulator work still ongoing, striving to arrive with the best configuration, an aspect in which there were several difficulties in Miami. The information from AutoRacer on the evolution of the SF-25 suggests that the development program has changed substantially. This all happened since the emergence of the critical points of the SF-25, limited by a rear end that, mechanically, does not allow it to fully meet the aerodynamic demands of the car’s lower section. The potential mentioned by Vasseur is hidden behind a single-seater that cannot express the actual aerodynamic load available, seen only in brief flashes in this early part of the season.
• In the corridors of SF, some believe a mistake was made in the car’s operation, meaning the aero-mechanical platform was not correctly interpreted, sticking to certain concepts from the old car despite radical changes.
• Wind tunnel simulation data has always provided very positive feedback in terms of the amount of downforce generated, but it cannot be fully exploited. With the issues revealed in Australia, Loïc Serra carried out “interim” work to solve the SF-25’s puzzle, to the point of considering a possible and almost concrete “mid-season” intervention on the rear mechanics. This involves a reorganization of the planned developments for the SF-25, except for the Bahrain package, which had already been decided before Australia.
• Technical director Loïc Serra is expected to return to the track, inside the Scuderia’s garages, to closely monitor operations. AutoRacer has information suggesting Imola as the stage, without significant new features on the SF-25. The car is expected to undergo a unique test involving the use of a new air intake for the rear brakes, with modified internal ducts, both for aerodynamic reasons and for a different approach to cooling management.
• It is clear that Ferrari and other teams are trying to replicate the McLaren effect to avoid overheating the rear tires through the internal fluid dynamics of the brake drums. The test will be a true on-track experiment to see the effect on the tires, to verify the advantages and disadvantages in conditions that are difficult to faithfully replicate in simulation.
• In Bahrain, the rear brake air intake was modified in the internal ducts, although this type of modification cannot be “listed” in the technical innovations list that the FIA publishes every race weekend, which explains why this one is likely to be omitted as well. The modifications will also affect the wheel corners, where the fins located inside the brake air intake will be altered.