Ferrari ‘relaunch’ at risk as worrying Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc feedback emerges
Lewis Hamilton has had a muted start to his Ferrari career in F1 2025
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc reportedly did not notice a significant difference with the Ferrari SF-25 when testing the car’s new rear-suspension upgrade.
Ferrari staged a filming day with the SF-25 at Mugello last week with Hamilton and Leclerc both behind the wheel.
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc ‘did not see much difference’ with key Ferrari upgrade
The outing saw both drivers sample the team’s highly anticipated upgrade to the rear suspension – tipped to ‘relaunch’ Ferrari’s stuttering season – in a real-world environment for the first time.
Following the introduction of a new floor in Austria last month (below), it is hoped that the suspension tweak will finally rectify Ferrari’s persistent ride-height woes and allow the team to access more of the car’s underlying potential in the second half of the F1 2025 season.
Ferrari has struggled with the car’s ride height since the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, where it was discovered that the SF-25 was running too close to the ground.
The situation hit a nadir at the following race in China, where Hamilton was disqualified for excessive skid-block wear 24 hours after winning the sprint race in Shanghai.
Ferrari has been forced to run the car higher than intended by designers at the cost of performance in the months since, with Hamilton and Leclerc reportedly instructed to lift and coast on the longest straights to help manage the issue.
If successful, the new rear suspension will allow Ferrari to experiment with more aggressive setup choices and potentially compete for race victories as the team seeks to keep hold of second place in the Constructors’ standings.
The Scuderia currently holds a 12-point lead over Mercedes, Hamilton’s former employer, in the fight for the runner-up spot behind runaway leaders McLaren.
Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc: Ferrari head-to-head scores for F1 2025
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates
A report by the Italian edition of Motorsport.com has claimed that Ferrari has committed to debuting the new rear suspension with both cars at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.
The decision comes despite the Spa race being a sprint weekend, leaving teams with just an hour of practice running to optimise setup on Friday before sprint qualifying.
And it has emerged that Hamilton and Leclerc have both been left with reservations over the true worth of the suspension tweak, with the drivers in agreement that the upgrade made little impact on track at Mugello.
It is said that the drivers ‘did not see much difference’ in the car during the filming day despite Ferrari’s simulations suggesting that the new rear suspension, combined with the Austria floor tweak, is worth around 0.1 seconds of lap time.
The report adds that the filming day was only useful for data-gathering purposes to compare the pre and post-upgrade specifications, with Hamilton and Leclerc running on demonstration tyres and a fixed setup enforced by regulation.
It is thought that the true gains of the suspension upgrade will be felt as Ferrari optimise the car’s setup going forward, with the team hopeful that it will inspire more confidence in Hamilton and Leclerc on a dry-weather qualifying lap.
With Hamilton leading calls for Ferrari to switch focus to its F1 2026 car – codenamed Project 678 – ahead of next year’s major rule changes, the suspension tweak is expected to be the team’s last major upgrade of the current season.
As reported by PlanetF1.com last week, however, Ferrari is set to bring a minor upgrade to the car’s power steering at next weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.
It comes after both drivers complained of the precision of the car’s steering, and the general stability of the front end, through the high-speed corners at Silverstone earlier this month.
More on Ferrari drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc from PlanetF1.com
PlanetF1.com revealed last Sunday that Leclerc’s concerns over the steering have persisted for months, having initially aired his worries after claiming his first podium finish of the season in Saudi Arabia in April.
Speaking to McLaren driver Oscar Piastri after the race in Jeddah, Leclerc complained that his steering wheel felt “heavy” with “no assistance.”
The Belgian Grand Prix weekend will mark 12 months since Hamilton’s last F1 victory, having inherited the win in 2024 after Mercedes team-mate George Russell was disqualified.
Leclerc is also a previous winner at Spa, having collected his maiden win at the Belgian Grand Prix in 2019.
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