Ferrari are reportedly ‘convinced’ that the true potential of the SF-25 car will be unleashed at this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix after a breakthrough in the team’s simulator.

The Scuderia have failed to live up to the hype at the start of the F1 2025 season, with Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc disqualified for separate offences at the last race in China.

Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc set for strong Japanese GP after Ferrari breakthrough?

While Leclerc’s car was found to be underweight in Shanghai, Hamilton was excluded from the official classification for excessive wear to his skid blocks.

It marked the second time in the last 18 months that Hamilton has been disqualified for excessive skid block wear, having suffered the same fate in his penultimate year with Mercedes at the 2023 United States Grand Prix.

Hamilton’s skid-block issue came just a week after Ferrari were reportedly forced to adjust their ride height at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.

Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc: Ferrari head-to-head scores for F1 2025

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Ferrari were said to have discovered after Friday practice in Australia, where Leclerc set the pace in FP2, that the car was running too close to the ground.

The subsequent adjustments left Leclerc and Hamilton running in a compromised state for the rest of the weekend as they finished eighth and 10th respectively in a rain-affected race.

The two-week gap between the Chinese and Japanese grands prix has given Ferrari the opportunity to troubleshoot their teething troubles with the SF-25.

And it has emerged that the team are heading to Suzuka with renewed confidence having identified a solution to their setup woes with work in their Maranello simulator.

A report by Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport has claimed that the team have tried as many as 20 different setup adjustments in the sim since China in an attempt to resolve their early season issues.

It is said that Ferrari, who have reverted to a pullrod front suspension layout for the first time in a decade with the SF-25, will run a different combination of suspension settings at the front and rear axle in Japan compared to the first two races of the season.

With the team certain that there are no fundamental flaws with their 2025 design concept, it is hoped that these tweaks will unlock the car’s true pace as soon as this weekend before the team introduce their first upgrade of the season in Bahrain next weekend.

The Bahrain upgrade, which will focus on the so-called ‘coke bottle’ area of the car around the sidepods and engine cover as well as the base of the diffuser, is expected to be followed by a more ‘extensive package’ at the Miami Grand Prix in early May.

Ferrari are said to be aware that their main problem at the start of the F1 2025 season is a ‘mix’ between the mechanical response of the suspension and the ‘aerodynamic criticality’ at the rear end with the car extremely sensitive to changes in ride height, resulting in a ‘substantial loss of load’ generated by the floor if it falls outside its optimum window.

More on Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari

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Hamilton offered a hint of Ferrari’s true pace in the Chinese Grand Prix sprint, where he converted pole position into victory by 6.889 seconds from McLaren driver Oscar Piastri.

However, Ferrari’s pace in the Shanghai sprint is understood to have been flattered by McLaren, who could only manage third (Piastri) and sixth (Lando Norris) on the grid for the mini race after a mistake with the run plan in sprint qualifying.

Piastri lost time recovering from his grid position, only passing Max Verstappen’s Red Bull for second place on lap 15 of 19.

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