By James Broughton, July 24, 2025
Ferrari have had issues with setting the ride height of the SF25 since the start of the season. They won the sprint race in China but were disqualified from the main race due to excessive plank wear. Since then, Ferrari have been forced to raise the car’s ride height to avoid further disqualifications. In the ground-effect era, the higher the ride height, the less downforce is generated. It’s a simple equation.
Ferrari have since introduced a new floor, but it hasn’t made much of a difference. At the upcoming Belgian Grand Prix, they plan to introduce an upgrade package, including a heavily revised rear suspension. They had an opportunity to test it during a media day, but based on the various online articles, it’s difficult to say whether it was successful.
Some F1 news sites claim that Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc gave the new upgrade package positive feedback. Others say it made no real impact on Ferrari’s current performance issues. A lot of this coverage appears to be media-driven clickbait, so it’s hard to know what to believe.
What is clear is that neither Ferrari, Hamilton, nor Leclerc have issued any public statements regarding the success—or lack thereof—of the upgrades. So, most of the stories circulating in the F1 media are likely wild speculation.
What is known is that Hamilton has suggested Ferrari abandon their search for a magical performance fix and instead focus all efforts on 2026. Either way, for 2025, there is no silver bullet. Ferrari might find some gains with the updates, but they’re likely to be small and incremental.
Ferrari’s 2025 season was effectively determined in 2024 when the initial engineering “blueprints,” so to speak, were laid out. In modern F1, it’s rare for teams to find a sudden performance boost that propels them to the top of the grid. Under current regulations, teams have limited scope to throw unlimited resources at fixing fundamental problems.