Nate SaundersMay 19, 2025, 12:35 PM ET
In the span of 24 hours, the feeling around Lewis Hamilton's first race for Ferrari on Italian soil did a full 180-degree flip.
Saturday at Imola was doom and gloom: Charles Leclerc and Hamilton missed Q3, qualifying 11th and 12th, respectively. Seven other teams managed better; only Haas and Sauber failed to get either of their cars in front of the Ferraris. Doing that anywhere is bad news for Ferrari, but doing it at the circuit little more than 50 miles from its Maranello factory is almost unacceptable. On Saturday, Hamilton told the media he was "devastated."
A day later, his mood was completely different. Hamilton had finished fourth, with an alternate tire strategy and some brilliant calls from the Ferrari pit wall around a late safety car period helping to vault him up the order.
For Hamilton, the result and the turnaround surpassed his sprint race victory at the Chinese Grand Prix, the second round of the season.
"China was pretty great, but I would say this one is better," he said on Sunday. "I've always loved when you're fighting from further back and coming through. That's how I started off as a kid, that's always such a better feeling than starting first and finishing first. But definitely, absolutely mega race. There are so many positives to take from it."
Just what are those positives?
"There are tons," Hamilton continued. "One is the strategy. It was really fantastic. They made great calls. Didn't put a foot wrong there.
"The car really helped. China, I felt really aligned with the car and then the only other time is just today. I felt that real synergy. I think the setup was great. I think we made a bit of an improvement in our performance. We just got knocked out of qualifying. If we had qualified [well] today, we would have been fighting for a podium, which is something we didn't think would be possible."
It was a good fightback, but some perspective is required before anyone can get too carried away.
This was still an eye-opening weekend, and Ferrari never felt like a podium contender on pure pace. Hamilton is been prone to dramatic shifts in tone based on his most recent result, and as he said, his race carried the feel-good factor of carving through the order in the closing stages.
The safety car had been beautifully timed for him, but terrible for others. Its deployment had Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso bemoaning he is the "unluckiest driver in the f---ing world."
Hamilton's teammate Leclerc's race was also undone by the safety car. His decision not to pit for fresh tires left him exposed to the charging Williams of Alex Albon late on. Leclerc, the long-suffering face of Ferrari's Formula 1 team, painted a much more measured figure about the team's weekend on Sunday evening when reflecting on his grand prix.
"It was one of the races where you've got to race with the heart and you've got to put the elbows out a little bit," Leclerc told Sky Sports F1. "I know that when it's like this, you go very much on the limit, sometimes a little bit over. But when you are starting P11, I mean, as a driver, I just cannot accept the situation we are in."
It must be a painfully familiar feeling for Leclerc. Twelve months ago, he had finished behind Max Verstappen and Lando Norris on the Imola podium, but this year he left the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari 85 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri. Ferrari is fourth in the constructors' championship, 165 points behind Piastri's McLaren team.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Ferrari came into the year fresh off the heels of running McLaren all the way to the line in last year's constructors' championship, and buoyed by the arrival of Hamilton. This was supposed to be a championship-contending car, but now 2025 seems little more than a salvage job. Frustratingly for all involved, there is still performance waiting to be unlocked beneath the darker shade of red the car is running this year.
When asked when the SF-25 comes alive, Leclerc said: "In the race, but before that, it's not there. We don't understand why yet."
That only compounds the frustration, as last year the team appeared to have finally unlocked a fundamental understanding of the car's sweet spot. Leclerc spearheaded Ferrari's resurgence in the second half of the season as the team emerged from the summer break a far more formidable outfit.
The key to the turnaround was how Ferrari had managed to find that perfect balance -- strong in qualifying but, crucially, stronger in races -- to give Leclerc, arguably F1's best driver over one lap, the perfect baseline to challenge for victory every weekend. In previous years, Ferrari's cars had been great qualifiers, but had too often faded in the race, prompting mistakes from driver and pit wall (both already under immense pressure) in a bid to compensate. Leclerc's wins in Monza and Austin, and Carlos Sainz's victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix, gave a tantalizing glimpse at what the team could achieve with a perfectly all-round car.
That sweet spot appears to have been lost this year. Hamilton has repeatedly referenced changes made after his sprint victory in China, which have come at the cost of performance. Tire warm-up appears to be the main area the team is unable to get its head around this year.
"It's clear that we are trying to extract the best from the car on Saturday," team principal Frédéric Vasseur said after the race at Imola. "The last two weekends, we didn't improve on the [last tire] set in quali. There is a bit of frustration for us. For sure, we need to put all our effort on this."
The tifosi can perhaps take comfort in the knowledge that if a solution to Saturday's disappearing pace can be found quickly, Ferrari might be able to turn a corner quite dramatically.
With qualifying a concern, Monaco's race will provide a big test. The snaky and narrow Monte Carlos circuit is famous for its qualifying having an outsize impact on the race -- something unlikely to change, despite the newly mandated two-stop strategy introduced to improve the spectacle.
Leclerc famously broke his hometown curse at the Monaco race last year but is not expecting a repeat this time around.
"A very difficult weekend," was his assessment of what to expect this weekend in the Principality. "I think Monaco is exposing quite a few weaknesses of our car, so I don't know, but there are also many things that you cannot really expect. The amount of risk you take in qualifying, the car is set up in a very different way, so I hope we will be surprised."
