F1, at Losail penultimate round of a sensationally reopened rainbow challenge

Russell is once again on the podium in this high-level season, but as far as performance is concerned, his gap with Andrea Kimi Antonelli, a growing talent who amazed once again in Las Vegas, seems to have closed. To the mistakes of inexperience in qualifying and the false start, Kimi added 50 laps at full speed, which allowed him to recover from 17th place to fifth, just a few seconds from second place. The 19-year-old from Bologna then benefited from the double McLaren disqualification to take his third career podium, the second in a row. Behind Mercedes' rise in the standings is undoubtedly his contribution.

At the Las Vegas party, the big absentee was Ferrari. After a disastrous qualifying session (Hamilton 20th and Leclerc ninth), the two Maranello drivers led a comeback race to the death in terms of performance. The British driver, author of a prodigious first lap in avoiding trouble, found himself in the middle of the pack at a similar pace to Ocon's Haas and Hulkenberg's Sauber, drivers with whom he then battled for the meagre consolation point of tenth place. Little better was the race for Leclerc, sixth at the finish and in a serious tyre crisis at the end. Both drivers then benefited from the McLaren disqualification and gained two positions, finishing eighth and fourth for the statistics: in any case, not what one would expect from the Rossa.

The feeling is that the Maranello stable is looking forward to the end of the season. Vasseur had in fact presented the weekend's target as an opportunity to focus on performance, 'making sure we leave nothing unexpressed in terms of performance'. In fact, this is the performance Ferrari can deliver in 2025.

2025 represents the conclusion of the regulatory cycle started in 2022, characterised by the introduction of ground effect as the dominant aerodynamic principle. The most significant change concerned the transfer of aerodynamic load generation from the upper surfaces (wings and appendages) to the car's underbody, thanks to Venturi channels and diffusers designed to exploit the depression under the single-seater.

In these four years, the team with the most points was Red Bull with 2,599 points, with three drivers' titles and two constructors' titles attached. In second place was Ferrari with 1,990 points, but no title. The author of a great comeback was McLaren, which got off to a bad start in 2022 but, with two constructors' world championships and (possibly) a drivers' title on the way, scored 1,883 points. The great disappointment of this cycle is undoubtedly Mercedes: 1,823 points and no championship won, after eight consecutive constructors' championships.

This 2025 season, dominated by McLaren, has seen a gradual rebalancing of values on the track thanks to the updates introduced by the main teams, with the sole exception of Ferrari. As the graph shows, the five-race moving average (i.e. the average of the points obtained in the last five races) converges around 25 points per weekend. The Scuderia di Maranello has an average return of 17 points and a low volatility in results, also due to the decision not to further update the SF25, a project born under a bad star.

Frequent changes in the FIA technical regulations put Formula One racing teams under pressure, forcing them to revisit their car designs with major changes in both aerodynamics and engines. For this reason, in 2025 team engineers had to make critical choices about how much time to devote to the development of the current single-seater or the one of 2026.

On this subject, Lewis Hamilton said back in June: 'We should be completely focused, in terms of development, on next year's car. I know Mercedes is already focused on next year. The key will be to develop that engine. [...] I'm trying to work with the engineers to make sure we correct some of the problems with this car, because there are some issues that need to be resolved for next year."

Ferrari, on the other hand, was not unprepared at the start of the last two FIA technical cycles. In 2022, it even opened the ground effect era with a Leclerc-Sainz one-two in Bahrain, but even in 2017 it started with a win by Vettel in Melbourne and a competitive car in the first part of the season. Then, in both cases, the performance was overtaken by the rivals, who were able to develop the single-seaters during the course of the season.

The results in the next graph speak for themselves. Taking the Barcelona Grand Prix, which is usually run in mid-May, as a reference, it emerges how Ferrari steadily loses points over the course of the season compared to the potential shown in the first races. The choice of Montmeló is not random: it is the weekend when the teams bring the most important technical updates. The circuit is complete, with a long straight, fast corners and a slower final section, ideal for evaluating the car in all conditions. Moreover, having been the venue for pre-season testing for a long time, it offers an extensive data base to compare performance. Finally, its location in the calendar is strategic: it comes at a time that allows the teams to catch up, with still many races ahead.

Ferrari's performance, measured as points scored per race weekend, has declined in eight out of nine years as the championship has progressed. The only exception was 2023, Fred Vasseur's first year at Maranello, when the team showed growth, a sign of a better understanding of the single-seater and the ability to extract performance. The graph compares the average points per weekend before and after the Barcelona Grand Prix: the figure shows how Ferrari lost ground after Montmelò, coinciding with the updates introduced by the teams: an average points loss of 11.4%.

For Ferrari fans, there remains the hope that this worrying end to the season is not the result of a technical misunderstanding of the SF25 but rather the result of its planned failure to develop, in the face of a company effort focused on 2026.

For some time now, the debate has been raging in Formula 1 to reform the sporting regulations on tyre management in races. Since the possibility of refuelling in the pits has been eliminated, the strategic variables on the track have in fact diminished, with tyre management taking centre stage. However, the experience gained by the teams in tyre management and the increasing reliability of Pirelli have made Formula One GPs often single-stop races, with drivers more concerned with managing tyre temperatures than pushing.

According to Mario Isola, Director of Pirelli Motorsport, interviewed on Sky microphones, something is moving in the discussion, but the possible choice of forcing drivers to double-stop does not convince the teams, who think it could be (not wrongly) an even sharper reduction of possible strategies, with races without the unknown one or two stops. The mandatory double stop was, moreover, a failed experiment at the last Monaco Grand Prix.

In Qatar there will be a similar situation, with the teams obliged not to use the same set of tyres for more than 25 laps of a 57-lap race. The double stop will therefore be compulsory, although the reasons for this are not dictated by an FIA strategic choice, but by safety issues raised by Pirelli. In fact, the sole supplier pointed out that Losail is 'a very severe track in terms of energy, thermal stresses and tread wear. The laps will be counted cumulatively between all the sessions on the track, including any laps completed under neutralisation". We'll see how it goes, remembering that Red Bull is historically the team most adept at handling extraordinary situations.

At Losail, the world fight will be played out over a sprint weekend, with the competition starting to get going as early as Friday at 6.30pm with qualifying for the sprint race. Saturday will have a double date: at 15.00 the 100 km race with 8 points available for the first in the standings, at 19.00 the qualifying for the starting grid. The race will take place on Sunday at night from 17.00 Italian time.