It’s been seven rounds since Formula 1’s last sprint race — too long for Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton.
Sprint races have been rare highlights in a season that’s been largely disappointing relative to the hype of this high-powered marriage.
Hamilton’s victory in China, just the second round of the season and the year’s first sprint, boosted those expectations considerably, but what’s followed since has been despondency bordering on resignation.
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The only exception to the subsequent string of sadness was Miami, where the year’s only other short race to date saw Hamilton finish on the podium behind the runaway McLaren drivers.
The two sprints are the only ones in which the Briton has looked like a genuine pole and podium threat, giving the Ferrari tifosi a tantalising but ultimately unsatisfied glimpse at the potential of this partnership.
Of course the disappointment has been more than just Hamilton’s. Ferrari has underperformed this year, having failed to deliver on the promise of last season’s honourable second in the constructors championship, falling short by just 14 points to McLaren in the final round.
This year has looked nothing like the last few months of 2024, when the team had the quickest car in Formula 1.
Average gap to pole, rounds 1 to 12
1. McLaren: 0.034 seconds
2. Red Bull Racing: 0.268 seconds
3. Mercedes: 0.345 seconds
4. Ferrari: 0.444 seconds
While Hamilton’s no-podium count underwhelms, teammate Charles Leclerc’s four trophies aren’t much better, particularly in context.
In Saudi Arabia the Monegasque benefited from Lando Norris’s qualifying crash, in Spain he capitalised on Red Bull Racing’s strategic implosion and Max Verstappen’s subsequent brain fade when he hit George Russell, and in Austria he gained from Verstappen being taken out of the race on the first lap.
Only his second place in Monaco was claimed on pure pace, Leclerc an expert on his home track, where Ferrari’s weaknesses were mitigated by the extreme layout.
The season has been so difficult to accept after last year that there’s talk in the Italian media that team principal Frédéric Vasseur, in only his third year in charge, is under threat. Vasseur is out of contract at the end of the year, and Maranello has reportedly considered swapping him out for its endurance racing chief, who’s overseen great success for the brand in the World Endurance Championship.
But there are green shoots emerging as the first half of the season transitions into the second.
And the Belgian Grand Prix, scene of the third sprint of the year, couldn’t be better timed.
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FERRARI’S BIG UPGRADE
The dignity of Ferrari’s season has for some time been pegged to a mid-year upgrade that would correct some of the problems afflicting the car.
The problems were made clearest on Sunday at the Chinese Grand Prix, where the team suffered an embarrassing double disqualification.
Hamilton’s was most instructive, struck from the race for plank wear — that is, for running his car too low.
The SF-25 has had to be run with a higher ride height ever since.
This generation of car wants to be run as close to the ground as possible and as stiffly as possible to maximise downforce generation from the floor, but that can be a difficult compromise to make on tracks featuring a wide range of corner speeds as well as bumpy surfaces or high kerbs.
Raising the ride height has put the Ferrari car outside its sweet spot — outside the range in which it was designed to run.
The first tranche of this mid-season upgrade arrived at the Austrian Grand Prix. Its significance was played down before the race, but both drivers were pleased to learn the new part delivered the uplift expected.
“It definitely helped us,” Leclerc said after qualifying second, which he’d turn into third at the flag. “I felt like there were some steps forward. How much, we need to see it in different characteristics of tracks.
“The numbers that we expected, we had them, which is a good start. That means that we are working in the right direction.”
It has moved up the table in terms of qualifying pace in the two sounds since Austria.
Average gap to pole, last two rounds
1. McLaren: 0.052 seconds
2. Ferrari: 0.357 seconds
3. Red Bull Racing: 0.433 seconds
4. Mercedes: 0.465 seconds
But the more important second component is the new rear suspension, which is reportedly set to arrive on the car this weekend.
The team trialled the upgrade during a filming day at Mugello Circuit — its picturesque Tuscan track in a valley of the northern Apennine mountains.
Filming days are strictly controlled by the regulations but allow teams to run their current cars. They’re ostensibly to gather promotional photos and videos but often used to shake down new cars at the start of the season or to trial upgrades in the middle of the year.
Mileage is limited and special promotional Pirelli tyres are mandatory, but it’s enough of a window to gather valuable data.
According to technical analysts Mark Hughes and Giorgio Piola, the only clear change should make the car more resistant to pitching forwards or backwards on the brakes or under acceleration.
That should allow the team to lower the car knowing that the front or rear won’t unexpectedly bottom out, damaging the plank and risking disqualification.
That in turn will increase downforce.
But upgrades are about more than just downforce in this ground-effect era.
Consistent and predictable downforce is more important than peak load because it gives the driver confidence to push knowing the car will behave as expected.
While the floor and new suspension on paper reportedly bring only so much pure lap time, the gains the team might make by making the car more complaint to Hamilton and Leclerc’s inputs could be far greater.
But the team will only know for certain when the car hits the track this weekend.
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THE SPRINT COMPLICATION
Belgium, however, isn’t the first destination you’d pick to run an important upgrade.
The long Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps is a good all-round test of a car, with its layout comprising corners of every speed as well as long straights. It’s also a power-sensitive circuit, with team usually selecting this track to install a new motor.
But this weekend being a sprint weekend complicates matters.
The sprint format means teams get only one hour of practice, down from the usual three.
It’s why teams rarely bring significant upgrades to sprint weekends — there’s too little time to assess whether they work and then respond accordingly. Even if they do work, validating the new parts takes away time from honing the car for the rest of the weekend.
But Ferrari is reportedly set to push on regardless.
It’s a sign of how important this upgrade package is. It’s not just an incremental performance improvement but could potentially revitalise the team’s entire season.
And in any case, Ferrari has been in good sprint form this year, particularly on Hamilton’s side of the garage.
We’ve had only two sprint rounds so far, but Hamilton has been a standout performer in both.
Adding up the points for the hypothetical sprint championship shows the Briton at the top of the table, tied on points with Oscar Piastri but ahead on countback courtesy of his Shanghai victory.
The numbers in brackets indicates change relative to actual drivers championship position.
Sprint championship
1. Lewis Hamilton: 14 points (▲ 5)
2. Oscar Piastri: 14 points (▼ 1)
3. George Russell: 10 points (▲ 1)
4. Lando Norris: 9 points (▼ 2)
5. Max Verstappen: 6 points (▼ 2)
6. Lance Stroll: 4 points (▲ 6)
7. Charles Leclerc: 4 points (▼ 2)
8. Andrea Kimi Antonelli: 4 points (▼ 1)
9. Yuki Tsunoda: 3 points (▲ 8)
10. Pierre Gasly: 1 point (▲ 3)
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It’s not just in terms of points that Hamilton has punched above his weight in sprints. Even in qualifying, the second session of a sprint weekend, he’s been in above-average form.
The numbers in brackets indicate change relative to average qualifying ranking for grand prix sessions. Sprint points are used to break ties.
Average sprint qualifying
1. Oscar Piastri: 2.5 average (no change)
2. Max Verstappen: 3.0 average (no change)
3. Lewis Hamilton: 4.0 average (▲ 3)
4. Andrea Kimi Antonelli: 4.0 average (▲ 3)
5. Lando Norris: 4.5 average (▼ 2)
6. Charles Leclerc: 5.0 average (▼ 1)
7. George Russell: 5.0 average (▼ 3)
8. Alex Albon: 8.5 average (no change)
9. Fernando Alonso: 10.5 average (▲ 1)
10. Isack Hadjar: 12.0 average (▼ 1)
A two-sprint sample size isn’t big enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. Hamilton has always been strong in China, and in Miami his podium had more to do with strategy than pure pace.
That said, both Ferrari drivers qualified higher for both sprints than they did in the subsequent grands prix. It’s too early to call it anything more than the potential beginning of a trend.
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FERRARI’S OTHER PROBLEM
But there as in interesting comparison to be drawn all the same.
While Ferrari has suffered from a clear general car deficit, it’s suffered particularly badly in grand prix qualifying.
One metric, albeit somewhat crude and unscientific, is that Leclerc and Hamilton have made up on average 1.05 and 1.17 places on Sunday relative to their starting positions.
In other words, the Ferrari is at least a little bit more competitive than its qualifying pace suggests. It’s better over a race distance than a single lap.
Leclerc let slip a fascinating little bit of information in Silverstone, where he and Hamilton qualified an underwhelming sixth and fifth respectively despite appearing to have the pace for a front-row start.
“The issues are very specific with the ones we have,” he said on Saturday night, per ESPN. “It’s not a balance issue. It’s not a grip issue.
“I don’t want to go into the detail, but it’s just something very weird that we’ve got to fight with the car, and especially when there are high speed corners it makes it even more difficult. I hope we can resolve it.”
Pursued on the matter, Leclerc said that he “cannot go into it” and then ended his media session.
His tiny revelation has been the subject of much speculation since.
Subsequent data analysis has corroborated that Ferrari struggles not simply with qualifying but with Q3 in particular. It regularly finds little improvement between Q2 and Q3, and sometimes, as was the case in Silverstone, it finds no improvement at all.
One theory relates to the power steering system based on Leclerc identifying it as being at its worst at tracks with high-speed corners — which, incidentally, are plentiful in Belgium.
The idea goes that the high g-forces through long, high-speed sweeps put excess strain on the power steering system, which in turn alters the way the steering gives feedback to the driver, which hampers their ability to get the most out of their final qualifying lap.
But a second theory gaining more traction is that it has to do with the Ferrari power unit.
The motor is run in its highest power mode for qualifying, which means it runs hotter and harder that it does at any time during the race.
The theory goes that by the time the engine gets to Q3, it’s too hot, and self-preservation mechanisms work to reduce power output at the critical moment of the pole shootout.
Alternatively, it might be battery related, with Ferrari’s power store not as efficient when pushed to its maximum, especially around high-speed laps that feature few heavy braking zones to replenish charge.
Whatever the case, it appears independent to the upgrade schedule the team has been undertaking between Austria and Belgium to cure the car’s general performance issues.
Leclerc appeared to suggest it could be resolved this season, but with so much attention now on next year’s car and power unit, Ferrari would be unlikely to devote too much time to it unless it could somehow benefit the 2026 package.
But as the team has learnt repeatedly this season, qualifying is crucial when the field is so close.
Maybe this weekend’s upgrade completes the puzzle and the SF25 becomes the frontrunner the team had hoped it would be during the off-season.
But unless it can extract that pace in qualifying, it will be of limited value.
We’ll know more by Sunday night.