Charles Leclerc has backed Ferrari’s call to cease development on the team’s 2025 Formula 1 car earlier than it had planned, describing the decision as a “no-brainer”.
Ferrari entered the recent campaign with high hopes amid the late charge in 2024 that had seen it come close to pipping McLaren to the Constructors’ Championship.
However, Ferrari was resigned to its protracted title drought continuing as it toiled with complications with the SF-25 in the opening rounds while McLaren dominated.
And while it pushed through a revised rear suspension to ease the ride height issues that had plagued the side, Ferrari canned aero upgrades that were in the pipeline.
That culminated in the Maranello-based squad losing ground as the season progressed, leading it to also drop behind Mercedes and Red Bull to outside the top three.
However, Leclerc, who has proclaimed that Ferrari is entering a “now or never” period, believes the team made the right choice to switch attention to 2026 when it did.
“We were at a technical disadvantage from the first race,” Leclerc told media including Motorsport Week. So, it’s not like it changed massively our approach to the season.
“And we saw it relatively quickly that we wouldn’t be fighting for the world title because McLaren was too strong, Red Bull was obviously starting to make big gains, there wasn’t much point in putting all our resources into trying to take the third or second place – if everything was going super well – in the Constructors’, at the cost of next year, whichever cost it may be.
“So yeah, it’s never something you want to do. I would have much preferred pushing the development the whole year to try and clinch that world title, 100 per cent.
“But if you are in the position that we were in at the beginning of the year, I think it was kind of a no-brainer. So, I don’t regret it.”
Why Ferrari couldn’t build on strong start to ground-effect era
Ferrari began the ground-effect era in 2022 with the benchmark package as Leclerc logged two victories in the opening three races to lead the Drivers’ Championship.
But Leclerc’s title bid soon unravelled as Ferrari squandered several points with technical issues and strategic blunders, while also losing out in the development race.
The Monegasque, though, has claimed that Red Bull starting 2022 with an overweight car concealed the greater potential that its RB18 harboured over Ferrari’s F1-75.
“I think for us there’s not only one reason. There are many reasons which, at different times, played a role,” he recalled.
“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. And yeah, other teams did better, especially McLaren and Red Bull.”
READ MORE – Ferrari responds to ‘now or never’ Charles Leclerc 2026 declaration
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