Ferrari Technical Director Loic Serra has reportedly laid out his development plans for the Italian marque’s 2025 and 2026 Formula 1 challengers.
The F1 grid has a unique challenge presenting itself in 2025 as the sport enters the final year of the current rules cycle ahead of wholesale changes for 2026.
As of January 1, teams were permitted to start aerodynamic testing on next year’s cars, but the catch is there’s only a specific amount of time that teams can use wind tunnels and CFD models.
For Ferrari, this conundrum is heightened by its finishing second in last year’s Constructors’ Championship, granting it the second-least amount of aerodynamic testing time per F1’s ATR regulations.
This amounts to 75% of the baseline testing time afforded to seventh in the Constructors’ standings.
Moreover, keeping in the 2025 development race is vital to maintain Ferrari’s title aspirations with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton but that cannot be done at the expense of falling short of maximising the new rules coming into effect next year.
Complicating the picture is the FIA’s recent update to the technical regulations that will see a clampdown on flexi-wings come into place for this year’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Ferrari can ill-afford to scrap 2025 development early as it bids to end its lengthy title drought, but failing to capitalise on the regulation changes could set it on a path of woe.
Ferrari to spend four months on 2025 F1 development
So, how is Technical Director Loic Serra planning to approach this year’s development conundrum?
According to Italian media outlet AutoRacer, Serra has already made plans to continue focussing on 2025 development through at least the first four months of the year.
That covers the first five rounds of the upcoming campaign, with 19 races scheduled thereafter, giving Ferrari plenty of scope to develop its 2026 challenger.
Ferrari’s ATR allowance will be skewed primarily towards 2025 development for these first months of the year with that scale tipping in next year’s favour as the season progresses.
Speaking ahead of this year’s ATR allocation coming into effect, Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur admitted that wind tunnel development is more or less complete on the 2025 car, allowing greater room to develop next year’s effort.
“It will probably be more for 2026, because in 2025 on the 31st of December when we will turn on the next [ATR] slot, I don’t want to say that all the job will be done because we will continue to develop at the beginning of 2025, the car of 2025, but we will all be fully focused on 2026 quite early into the season,” said Vasseur.
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