Why Charles Leclerc remains upbeat after Ferrari’s ‘difficult’ start

Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari can have an ‘amazing season’ even after their tough start

The 2025 Formula 1 season began with so much promise for Ferrari. With one of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport joining the lineup for the upcoming campaign, and Ferrari coming off a finish just 14 points behind McLaren in the 2024 Constructors’ Championship race, the arrow was trending up for the Scuderia.

The arrow remained up after Saturday at the Chinese Grand Prix, when Hamilton secured his first win at Ferrari with a victory in the F1 Sprint race.

But the team came crashing back to Earth the next afternoon, as both Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified after finishing in the points at the Chinese Grand Prix. Hamilton was disqualified for excessive plank wear on his SF-25 while Leclerc’s car came in underweight.

Now, Ferrari arrives in Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix in rather unfamiliar territory: Sitting tied with Williams on 17 points in the standings, and listed fifth in the table due to tiebreaker rules.

Still, Leclerc remains “confident” heading into the weekend, and the rest of the season. Confident not just in the team learning from the mistakes in Shanghai, but in closing the gap to the teams at the front.

“I’m confident because whenever you make mistakes, you learn from them, especially when they cost that much,” said Leclerc at the FIA Press Conference when asked about the double DQ in China.

“Everybody plays with the limit and tries to be as close as possible to it. But to have both cars underneath it was a big pain. We didn’t need that.

“It’s been a very difficult first part of the season. The first two races were difficult, the pace was not where we expected it to be, and to lose even more points than we already did with that, it hurts the team a lot. I’m confident we’ve learned from it,” continued Leclerc. “Whenever these kind of events happen we try to understand and analyze what went wrong and change a little bit the process. It was a multitude of things adding up, and the margin we took wasn’t big enough.”

Asked about the SF-25, the team’s challenger for the 2025 season, Leclerc conceded that the car is currently “difficult” to drive but noted that that is always the case in F1 when drivers are trying to extract every possible tenth out of their challengers. Instead, what Leclerc pointed to was the gap to McLaren, and now Ferrari is “just not good enough” at the moment.

“It’s as difficult as always,” began Leclerc. “It’s always tricky to extract the maximum. I don’t think it’s harder this season – it’s just the performance compared to McLaren is just not good enough. It’s not about extracting the performance – it’s just that there isn’t enough of it for now.

“But step by step, I’m sure and confident we can close that gap, starting from this weekend hopefully.”

However, Ferrari fans hoping for a big step forward in Japan might want to temper their expectations. When asked during the FIA Press Conference if he was expecting a “step forward” in Japan, Leclerc conceded that he expects Ferrari to be on a similar footing to where they were Sunday in China, and not Saturday in Shanghai when Hamilton took the win in the F1 Sprint.

“We saw a big step on Saturday – especially in the Sprint race with Lewis. On Sunday, I think it was back to normal,” said Leclerc. “So I expect us to be more or less in line with where we were in China on Sunday and in Melbourne.”

For years tire degradation has been an issue for Ferrari. The team took a big step forward in 2024 in this area, but both Leclerc and Hamilton suffered from degradation in the Chinese Grand Prix, with Hamilton being one of the drivers to implement a two-stop strategy.

Leclerc pointed to struggles in qualifying and the team’s one-lap pace as a reason for their current degradation woes.

“I think we’re starting to understand the car and have some ideas where we’re lacking,” began Leclerc when asked about Ferrari’s pace.

“In Australia, it was well understood. In China, Lewis did an outstanding job on Friday – maybe some drivers didn’t put everything together in qualifying and he managed to do that and managed to outperform the car a bit. Then tire degradation being a big thing.

“When you start in front, everything comes to you a bit more. But I think Lewis made a difference on Friday and Saturday, which in the second qualifying – everyone was more up to pace – we saw more of the real pace of the car,” continued Leclerc. “I think, very similar to last year, we have a good car in terms of race pace, but we couldn’t really show it until now. Whenever you start in the middle of the pack, degradation is worse, and you can’t really show your real pace. That’s what happened a bit on Sunday in China.

“So I think the pace is still as good as what we saw Saturday with Lewis. However, we can’t use it if we don’t have better qualifying pace. So if I take a step back that’s where we need to improve – qualifying,” concluded the Ferrari driver. “It was the case last year, and this year it seems even more so.”

Still, even with all these issues as outlined by Leclerc, the driver believes Ferrari can still have an “amazing season” despite their slow start.

Including a challenge for both the Constructors’ Championship, and the Drivers’ title.

“Not yet,” said Leclerc when asked if it was time to worry about Ferrari’s title ambitions.

“If we go back to last year, looking at the first few races, the situation in terms of performance was quite a bit worse than where we are now. We kind of expected Red Bull to dominate the whole season, and by taking the points that were available at the beginning of the season with the performance we had, we ended up actually fighting for the championship – which was way above our expectations.

“There’s definitely not that feeling within the team at the moment,” Leclerc continued.

“However, we do feel we haven’t maximized what we could have in the first two races, and that’s frustrating. But it doesn’t mean we cannot recover. The season is still very long.

“Small steps after small steps – we can still have an amazing season.”