Ferrari’s drivers finished the race in Miami in seventh and eighth place, with a time gap of over one minute to winner Oscar Piastri.

The SF-25 looked poor throughout the entire weekend, but the question remains – could Ferrari have done something differently in terms of team decisions?  With the help of telemetry data, we investigate whether an earlier driver position swap or a different strategy could have positively influenced the race outcome.

Qualifying revealed how problematic the SF-25 really is

It all started on Saturday when Lewis Hamilton failed to reach Q3, finishing P12, while his teammate couldn’t do better than P8 – behind both Williams drivers. A gap of over half a second from pole position is clear evidence that the SF-25 is far from the desired performance level.

The areas where Ferrari lost the most time were the braking zones and corner exits, where the unstable rear end becomes apparent during throttle application. In the first sector alone, Leclerc lost over 0.4s compared to Max Verstappen, mostly through T1 and the fast corners T4 to T6.

In the second sector, things got even worse as Verstappen kept increasing the gap. Through the slowest part of the track, from T11 to T16, Leclerc struggled with oversteer and very poor rear grip. Also, in this section, Ferrari’s tyres overheated, making the car very difficult to handle.

In other words, by Saturday it was already clear that Ferrari would be slow – though perhaps not this slow.

Both Williams drivers had better race pace than the Ferrari pair – while Hamilton was almost a full second slower on average than Oscar Piastri. It’s safe to say that the Italian team was the fifth-fastest team in Miami. Definitely not a result anyone expected heading into the season.

At the start of the race, Hamilton was on hard tyres while Leclerc was on mediums. Lewis managed to pass Hadjar at the start, followed by a long period of struggle for Ferrari. Leclerc was stuck at P8 behind the Williams drivers, while the seven-time champion couldn’t get past Ocon in the Haas – until lap 23 when he finally overtook him. By then, he had lost time to both his teammate and the Williams drivers, who were already too far ahead to be realistic targets.

On the other hand, Albon and Sainz focused on Mercedes and adapted their strategy to them – which eventually played in Ferrari’s favour.

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A virtual safety car was deployed due to Bearman’s mechanical failure, giving Ferrari’s drivers a perfect opportunity to pit with a lower time loss. Under the VSC in Miami, you typically lose 11 seconds for a pit stop, compared to around 20 seconds under green flags. Fortune was on Ferrari’s side this time, as Albon and Sainz had pitted just a few laps earlier.

At the end of the VSC, Leclerc was positioned between the two Williams cars, while Hamilton was ahead of Tsunoda, who also pitted shortly before the VSC. On lap 31, Sainz overtook Leclerc, beginning a battle with both Ferrari cars, which were close behind. It looked like Sainz had good enough pace to hold both red cars behind, but shortly afterward, another VSC followed.

Leclerc used the return to green flags to attack the Spaniard immediately – and succeeded – with Lewis also taking advantage and gaining a position.

The next target was Antonelli in P6, who had increased his gap to the Ferrari pair by over two seconds during their battle with Sainz.

The key difference between the Ferrari drivers was that Lewis, on medium tyres, clearly had better pace than Leclerc. We could hear the Brit complain that he would only burn through his tyres if he continued driving in the dirty air behind his teammate.

And he was right – the best decision would have been to swap positions as early as possible, not five laps after passing Sainz. True, the Spaniard was close at the time, but not within DRS range. When Ferrari finally swapped positions in lap 39, Sainz was 1.6 seconds behind – so they could definitely have done it a few laps earlier.

Would it have changed anything?

It’s hard to say for sure, because we don’t know how much Hamilton wore out his tyres in his teammate’s dirty air. After the lap 39 swap, both drivers had almost identical pace. They gradually closed the gap to Antonelli, but not fast enough – the Mercedes driver remained safe in his position.

As the race neared its end, Hamilton lost pace due to worn tyres, so they swapped back again in lap 53. After that, it was clear that Leclerc had better pace – he reduced the gap to Antonelli to under two seconds by the end.

In short, both drivers could have used their tyres more effectively – Lewis at the start, and Leclerc at the end of the second stint. What they needed was better communication and coordination from the team. With that, an attack on the Mercedes driver would have been much more realistic.

However, Ferrari’s main issue remains the difficult setup of the SF-25, which is extremely sensitive to ride height changes. The performance window in which this car is fast is very narrow, and the engineers are struggling to find it.

After the Miami race, the world’s fastest circus now moves to the European tour, which will be a critical phase for the Italian team. We’ll see if they can close the gap to the front-runners.

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