Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari’s improved “emotional management” under Fred Vasseur has enabled it to overcome issues quicker in Formula 1 compared to the past.
Ferrari began the previous campaign as the closest challenger to Red Bull’s dominance, racking up 10 podiums and two wins in the opening eight races with a revamped SF-24.
But updates in Spain induced accentuated bouncing at high speed, prompting a mid-season slump which denied the squad the chance to capitalise on Red Bull’s demise.
Ferrari responded with more developments at Monza, culminating in a late surge which witnessed the side amass the most points across the grid in the remaining eight races.
That late surge wouldn’t be enough to pip McLaren to the Constructors’ title, though, but Leclerc has dismissed that Ferrari’s blip was the overriding reason that it missed out.
Instead, Leclerc highlighted that Ferrari’s raw competitiveness wasn’t good enough at various points in 2024, underlining the need to make a stronger start to the new season.
“I think it’s very difficult to say, ‘OK, it’s exactly because of that’,” Leclerc told select media including Motorsport Week after sampling Ferrari’s 2025 car, the SF-25.
“I think there’s been numerous factors that made us come short of our ultimate objective, which was to win the championship.
“I think, obviously, some of those were what you said. I think another one, though, was the fact that we were just not competitive enough for too big of a part of the season.
“On that, the target is definitely to rectify that and to start this new season on a better foot and to be on par, at least, with the guys in the front in order to fight straight away from the beginning of the season, because our season has been a very, very solid one, we were just not fast enough in the first half.
“So in order for us to win the World Championship, we definitely need to start these first races straight away on top, or at least fighting with the others.
“But we’ve done a really, really good job in the second half of the season. We’ve been working really well, and I hope we can use this momentum in order to start strong this year.”
Ferrari has better approach to solving problems
Ferrari wasn’t alone in encountering any unexpected complications with new parts last season, with rivals Mercedes and Red Bull also running into detrimental troubles.
But while there are no guarantees more setbacks won’t arise, Leclerc says Ferrari is in a better place to resolve them with the calm environment Vasseur has cultivated.
“I think that it’s embedded in this new regulation of cars,” he explained. “We obviously tend to drive these cars very, very low to the ground, which we are touching a lot and whenever you touch some things, it’s very, very difficult to reproduce the bottoming in wind tunnel or CFD.
“That makes it particularly difficult for this generation of cars and I think that creates a lot of the problems that sometimes you see teams that did not expect any of what’s happening on track happen.
“And then, on the second point, maybe there are ways to predict it in a better way and we’ve worked on those ways as much as possible.
“But obviously, whenever this even happens, it’s because there’s something that you didn’t predict that happened and that might happen again.
“In those cases, I think the approach to solving the problem is super important and I think we became much more solid at it, and that is to come back on the team mentality and the way we approach problems and the emotion management within teams.
“We’ve improved a lot and I think that has made the difference in recovering quicker whenever we get in those moments that are a bit more difficult to manage.”
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