Coming up short in qualifying, and seemingly taking a step backwards in recent weekends, Fred Vasseur admits Ferrari are “worried” ahead of Monaco’s all-important qualifying session.

One of Ferrari’s strengths last season, this year qualifying has been the SF-25’s Achilles’ heel with Ferrari recording just a solitary front row start in nine qualifying sessions.

‘Frustrated, worried’, can Ferrari reach the front row in Monaco?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Last time out at Imola, the first of Ferrari’s two home races, the Italian stable suffered a humiliating double Q2 elimination.

Lewis Hamilton, P12 on the grid, told media including PlanetF1.com that his SF-25 “just can’t go quicker” while Charles Leclerc, one position ahead of his team-mate, said they were “just P-nowhere at the moment”.

Neither driver was able to get their new soft Pirellis to work on their second run in Q2.

“There’s not enough performance in the car,” Leclerc added to Sky F1. “There’s just not the potential that we will hope inside this car at the moment and we need to be better.”

F1 2025: Ferrari team-mate head-to-head stats

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

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

Although the team-mates had a better Sunday, Hamilton racing his way to fourth place while Leclerc was sixth at the chequered flag, Vasseur admits their qualifying troubles are a concern.

“There is a bit of frustration for us. For sure, we need to put all our effort on this. Next weekend, Monaco, on Saturday evening, it will be almost done,” he said.

“We have to [have] much more performance on Saturday. Monaco is probably a bit different on tyre management. We have to do a much better job on Saturday next week.

“We’ll probably have to take a different approach for the preparation lap; we can’t extract the potential of the soft tyre in qualifying.

“With mediums, we were competitive but with softs we struggled.

“I think it’s more down to the compound and tyre preparation.”

Heading to Monaco for part two of F1 2025’s second triple-header, Ferrari face an uphill battle as qualifying is more important around the Monte Carlo street circuit that it is at most other circuits.

The race has been won from pole position 32 times in 70 races, Leclerc adding his name to that list last season.

Since 1950, the race has only been won 10 times by a driver starting lower than third.

“Yes, we are worried,” Vasseur admitted. “If we don’t do a better job than this weekend [Imola], the next race will definitely be much harder.”

Leclerc, the only Monegasque to have won his home race, fears he won’t be making it back-to-back wins this season.

“I think Monaco is exposing quite a few weaknesses of our car, so I don’t know,” he said.

“But there are also many things that you cannot really expect in Monaco, the amount of risk you take in qualifying, the car is setup in a very different way so I hope we will be surprised.”

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