Charles Leclerc’s disqualification from the Chinese Grand Prix saw former team-mate Sebastian Vettel instantly regain his title as Ferrari’s highest-ever F1 points scorer.

Leclerc finished fifth on the road in Shanghai last Sunday with the 10 points added to his tally putting him on 1,409 in total since he joined Ferrari at the beginning of the 2019 season.

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It saw Leclerc surpass the all-time Ferrari record previously held by four-time World Champion Vettel, who scored 1,400 points over the course of six full seasons with the Scuderia between 2015 and 2020.

However, Leclerc was disqualified hours after the race when his Ferrari SF-25 was found to be underweight.

Pierre Gasly, the Alpine driver, was excluded for the same offence with Leclerc’s Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton – initially classified sixth in China – also disqualified for excessive skid-block wear over the course of the 56-lap race.

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Leclerc’s lost points have seen him drop back to 1,399 points for Ferrari, one fewer than Vettel, who retired from F1 at the end of the 2022 season after a two-year stint with Aston Martin.

Barring another disastrous weekend, Leclerc – competing in his seventh full season with Ferrari in F1 2025 – is likely to retake the record from Vettel at next weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, a venue where the German won four times over the course of his illustrious F1 career.

Vettel also claimed the last of his 57 F1 pole positions at Suzuka in 2019, a season noted for his tense inter-team rivalry with Leclerc at Ferrari.

Ferrari’s double disqualification in China continued the team’s challenging start to the F1 2025 campaign, with Hamilton’s pole-to-flag victory in Saturday’s sprint race in Shanghai the only bright spot of the Scuderia’s season so far.

Leclerc and Hamilton finished a distant eighth and 10th in the season opener in Australia earlier this month as the pair visibly struggled in both the dry and wet in qualifying and the race respectively.

A report in Italy last week claimed that Ferrari were forced to run in a compromised state in Melbourne after an issue with the setup was discovered.

It is said that Ferrari realised after Friday practice at Albert Park, where Leclerc set the pace in FP2, that the car’s ride height was too low.

With a low ride height bringing the risk of disqualification due to excessive wear to the skid blocks, the SF-25 was raised for the rest of the weekend as Ferrari took a performance hit.

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Ferrari sit fifth in the Constructors’ standings at this early stage of F1 2025, level on 17 points with fourth-placed Williams.

The Scuderia already trail leaders McLaren, winners of the first two races via Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in Australia and China respectively, by 61 points.

It comes just months after Ferrari finished just 14 points short of McLaren in the F1 2024 Constructors’ title fight.

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