Where did it go wrong for Mercedes and Ferrari in F1’s ground effect era?

As 2025 comes to a close, Formula 1 bids farewell to the ground effect cars of the last four seasons. Only Red Bull and McLaren had title glory to shout about.

For Mercedes and Ferrari, it was a case of highs and lows, which averaged out into unsuccessful title quests. Both Mercedes’ George Russell and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc pointed to Red Bull’s flying start in F1’s ground effect era, and reflected on the years which followed ahead of switching focus to new opportunities under the revamped F1 2026 regulations.

F1 ground effect: The era of Red Bull and McLaren

When the new rules arrived in 2022, marking Formula 1’s switch back to a ground effect aerodynamic philosophy, it was Red Bull and Ferrari which came flying out of the blocks.

Ferrari soon faded, as Max Verstappen and Red Bull became the dominant force.

It took until 2024 for McLaren to usurp Red Bull, as Ferrari narrowly missed out on the Constructors’ title to McLaren that year. Verstappen, meanwhile, was denied a clean sweep of Drivers’ titles in the F1 ground effect era by McLaren’s Lando Norris, who goes into F1 2026 as the defending Drivers’ Champion.

At the final round of 2025 in Abu Dhabi, Russell and Leclerc were asked what they believe their respective teams were missing under these regulations versus Red Bull and McLaren.

F1 2026 sees the introduction of heavily revamped chassis and engine regulations, in one of the biggest season to season shake-ups which the sport has ever seen. Russell and Leclerc were asked whether the struggles in this ruleset, impacts there confidence that Mercedes and/or Ferrari can nail the new rules.

“I think it’s been an extremely challenging set of regs, to be honest,” said Russell.

“And obviously, this second half of the year, Red Bull have been on a very high level. But if I were to answer that question at the summer break, I would have argued that we were at a similar level to Red Bull.

“And if you compare that to ’23 – Aston Martin were ahead of ourselves and Ferrari and dropped off, McLaren were nowhere and obviously just found something pretty spectacular.

“So, I can’t really answer that question – what it is we’ve missed.

“I think it’s probably more where we started. I think we probably started in the wrong place and led ourselves down the wrong path and then had to revert. And clearly Red Bull, out of the blocks, had the least amount of porpoising in ’22 and almost had a six or eight-month head start on everybody while we were trying to work that out.

“So, I don’t think this regulation is really going to have any impact on the next set of regs, because the issues are going to be totally different.”

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While Russell did claim Canadian and Singapore GP victory in 2025, Ferrari ended the year winless.

“I think for us there’s not only one reason,” said Leclerc of Ferrari’s F1 ground effect struggles. “There are many reasons which, at different times, played a role.

“In the beginning of ’22, we actually started off quite strongly, but we were struggling with porpoising, where Red Bull had a very stable platform. And they were actually quite a lot overweight, so as soon as they took off that weight, they were suddenly at the level where they’ve been since then.

“And then for last year, we focused very early on next year’s car, which I hope is a bet that will be a winning one. But for sure, it has some influence from the last two thirds of the season where we’ve been struggling more than others because we didn’t bring that many upgrades.

“But in general, it’s just been a generation of car that was very, very difficult to understand. And what worked back at the factory – I think everybody has been surprised once or more times that when you bring it on track, it doesn’t correlate exactly to what you were expecting from that part. And that was the challenge of it.

“Other teams did better, especially McLaren and Red Bull.”

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