Hamilton’s blunt Baku verdict: Ferrari stuck in a holding pattern
Ferrari showed a flicker on Friday in Baku. By Sunday night, the glow had faded to the familiar red of tail lights.
Lewis Hamilton cut a weary figure after Ferrari’s latest low-return weekend, the seven-time champion admitting the Scuderia is unlikely to claw back much ground in the closing stretch of 2025 without fresh parts to fight with.
“McLaren’s been ahead all year,” Hamilton said after finishing eighth, with Charles Leclerc ninth. “We haven’t really made steps. Red Bull brought an updated floor at the last race — they’ve picked up pace. You’d expect them to win more.”
Ferrari had topped practice, enough to tempt the optimists into believing the team had finally found a window. Qualifying ended that fantasy quickly. Hamilton fell in Q2, Leclerc clipped the wall early in Q3 and never recovered. On race day, the pair spent most of their afternoon staring at the back of the same two cars they’ve been shadowing for months — and even a late attempt to swap places back between teammates couldn’t lift the mood.
The bigger story is the long game. Ferrari’s gaze is fixed squarely on 2026 and the incoming rules reset, a hard pivot that’s left this year’s car largely frozen while McLaren and Red Bull keep layering on upgrades. That’s not a moral failing; it’s a strategic choice. But it does carry a cost on Sundays like these.
“I’d give anything for an upgrade,” Hamilton admitted. “But we’re focused on next year’s car. So we’ve got to be sharper with what we have — qualifying, execution, everything.”
That’s the uncomfortable truth of Ferrari’s 2025: the SF-25 has a ceiling, and the team knows exactly where it is. When the track suits the car and the tyres behave, Ferrari can sit in the leading train. When it doesn’t, they end up coaxing an eighth or ninth out of a package that isn’t evolving nearly as fast as those around them.
Baku was a case study. Straightline speed mattered, traction out of the castle section mattered, and track position mattered most of all. Ferrari blinked in qualifying and paid for it for 51 laps. There were no tricks left in the strategy bag — just tidy stops, clean execution and a little intra-team choreography that didn’t quite come off.
Hamilton’s tone has shifted across the season from cautiously upbeat to frank. That’s not criticism for the sake of it; it’s a veteran reading the grid. McLaren’s development rate has been relentless in 2025, and Red Bull’s recent floor tweak puts the RB in a more comfortable window. You can’t will yourself into that fight — you need carbon and CFD to do the heavy lifting. Ferrari’s not bringing much of either until the rulebook flips.
So what’s left? Margins. If Ferrari can get Hamilton and Leclerc consistently inside the first three rows on Saturday, damage limitation becomes podium possibility. If not, it’s an afternoon of elbows-out defending and a points haul that looks better on paper than it felt in the cockpit.
None of this changes the broader arc. Ferrari made its choice: invest in 2026. The irony is that it’s the right choice — and it makes weekends like Baku feel wrong. Hamilton knows it; Leclerc knows it; everyone in red knows it. The car is what it is. The job now is to squeeze it dry.
