Ferrari’s Australian Grand Prix weekend was ‘shipwrecked’ after a ‘serious problem’ with the SF-25 car was discovered after practice, it has been claimed.

The Scuderia enjoyed a difficult weekend as the F1 2025 season got underway in Melbourne, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finishing eighth and 10th respectively in a rain-affected race.

Ferrari reportedly ‘shipwrecked’ by ‘serious problem’ at Australian GP

It came after a disappointing performance in qualifying, which saw the Ferrari pair down in seventh and eighth, slower than Yuki Tsunoda’s Racing Bull (fifth) and Alex Albon’s Williams (sixth).

Ferrari made an encouraging start to the weekend at Albert Park with Leclerc setting the pace in the second Friday practice session.

His fastest lap of FP2 put him clear of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, who ultimately secured a front-low lockout for McLaren before the latter went on to win the race.

Analysis: Australian Grand Prix

👉 Australian GP conclusions: Norris 2.0, the Max factor and why Hamilton needs time

👉 Australian GP driver ratings: Who mastered the storm in Melbourne?

Norris’s victory put him in the lead of the Drivers’ standings for the first time in his career entering this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen losing the lead of the World Championship after almost three years at the top.

A report by the Italian edition of Motorsport.com has shed new light on how Ferrari’s weekend took a wrong turn with the SF-25 running in a compromised state on Saturday and Sunday.

It is claimed that the setup the team had identified in the simulator ahead of Melbourne had proven incorrect, with the car running too close to the surface of the track in Friday practice.

Ferrari proceeded to raise the ride height for the remainder of the weekend to avoid excessive wear to the skid blocks, which brings the risk of disqualification, but in doing so lost aerodynamic performance.

It has been described as a ‘serious problem’ as the SF-25, which features a number of concept changes for the final year of the current regulations, was ‘designed with an aggressive aerodynamic map’.

More on Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari

👉 Lewis Hamilton news

👉 Ferrari news

In the current ground-effect era, teams have faced the challenge of running the car’s ride height as low as possible to extract maximum performance without causing excess wear to the skid blocks or triggering the porpoising (bouncing) phenomenon.

Leclerc and Hamilton, then of Mercedes, were disqualified from the United States Grand Prix in 2023 after their skid blocks were found to have suffered too much wear at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

Earlier that season, meanwhile, the dominant Red Bull pair of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez were instructed to lift off the throttle through the compression at Eau Rouge during the Belgian Grand Prix to protect their skid blocks from excessive wear.

The report adds that the team’s choice of a medium-downforce rear wing – described as a ‘parachute’ – for Australia only worsened the car’s performance with the other leading teams all electing for a smaller rear wing.

Read next: The inside story of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari debut