Lewis Hamilton prayers answered as Ferrari reveal SF-25 upgrade plans

Ferrari will likely be bringing upgrades to the SF-25 at next weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, Fred Vasseur has revealed.

Vasseur has confirmed that upgrades will be rolled out on the SF-25 over the coming weeks, although the Frenchman downplayed the extent of the competitive jump the changes could make.

Ferrari set to introduce upgrades at the Austrian Grand Prix

Aside from circuit-specific declarations at recent races, Ferrari’s tweaks to the SF-25 have been particularly minor when it comes to its development path.

But that will change over the coming rounds, as Vasseur confirmed updates are en route as early as next weekend’s race at the Red Bull Ring.

Speculation has suggested the upgrades will focus on revisions to the rear pullrod suspension of the SF-25, in a bid to increase the stability of the car after the Scuderia switched from push to pullrod suspension over the winter.

The intention is to be able to run the car in a more performance-oriented ride height window, which Ferrari is believed to have struggled with since Lewis Hamilton’s Chinese GP disqualification for excessive plank wear triggered by running too low.

“We will have an upgrade soon, before the UK. And, perhaps, another one a bit later,” Vasseur said after the Canadian Grand Prix.

“But, honestly, today, I think there is much more in the execution and what you are getting from the car than in the potential of the car itself.

“Now, we are at the end of the life of these regulations, and we all know that, when we are bringing something on track, we are more speaking about hundredths than tenths.”

Seemingly downplaying the expectations of what the upgrade may bring in terms of performance, Vasseur pointed to how execution will play a bigger role than physical changes to the car when it comes to results.

“If you don’t do a good usage of the car because the set-up is a bit different, you can lose tenths,” he said.

“A couple of times, on our side at least – and we are not the only one – when we brought upgrades in the past, we needed one or two races to adapt the car, to adapt the set-up to the new version.

“Honestly, I think that, and I want to put the focus on the team, there is much more [to come from] the execution than the pure potential of the car. But we will bring something.”

Asked what may be possible in Austria, Vasseur said, “I think that we were able to be in front in Monaco, we were able to be in front in the first part of the quali lap there.

“We have to target doing this. But if we want to achieve, if we want to start from the first rows, and to have a clean weekend like Monaco, we need to do a very smooth weekend in terms of execution. It’s where we failed massively in Canada.”

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Lewis Hamilton: Ferrari needs upgrades to fight the guys up front

Having taken fifth place on the grid in Canada, before racing to sixth on Sunday, Hamilton spoke about how he has found different aspects of the car “not working” as the weekend has progressed.

“More often than not, we go through FP1 and then, at previous races, FP2s have not been so great, because there’s been something wrong with the car – like the floor’s not working or the rear wing’s stopped working.

“There’s always been something that meant we were down on downforce or something. So then you have a bad FP2, and you’re kind of recovering in FP3.

“But we had a good, solid day yesterday, and then today we made progress. We didn’t change a huge amount, and the car felt solid. We moved forward, which I think is a first for this season. So I’m grateful to get through to Q3.”

With Hamilton explaining that his adjustments in his own driving style have resulted in something of an uptick in recent events, the British driver has been blunt in saying upgrades are needed if Ferrari is to fight with the fastest teams.

“It’s just incremental steps,” he said.

“We’ve not had any upgrades or anything like that; it’s been the same car for quite some time now. And, with the same package each weekend, I’m just challenging the guys.

“I’m constantly battling the engineers, asking them questions. Because they set things up and are like ‘This is how we always do it’ and I’m like ‘what about this?’.

“So we work on trying things, and bit by bit, we are making progress. We’re improving our qualifying from Monaco onwards, which is positive. Ultimately, we need upgrades. We need an upgrade to be able to fight the guys up front.”

With all the teams treading a fine balancing act of upgrading the current cars in a bid to stay competitive this year, whilst simultaneously developing the revolutionary F1 2026 cars, Hamilton said the “priority” is to develop a race-winning car for the new ruleset.

“It’s my first half of the year in a new team. It’s interesting to see how different teams work and operate,” he said.

“There’ve been times in my career where you’ve had a whole bunch of upgrades very, very early on in the season, and you plow ahead very early, then you stop and taper off, and then sometimes it’s been slower.

“It’s also, in the last year of this generation of cars, harder to find performance, and you could, at least, focus on the next year.

“The fact is, with this car, we hopefully can still fight for a second in the Constructors’, which would be great, but I want a car that can win next year, so that’s priority.”

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