Should Ferrari shift focus to F1’s 2026 season already?

The Spanish Grand Prix was supposed to be a key race for Ferrari in the 2025 Formula 1 world championship. And while the race saw the Scuderia return to second position in the constructors’ standings, the expected step forward was clearly not achieved – and Lewis Hamilton was left asking for a shift in focus to next year.

In the Barcelona race, Ferrari capitalised on having two drivers in the top six, while Mercedes and Red Bull had just one each in the top 10 as a result of Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s reliability issues and Yuki Tsunoda’s ongoing struggles at the team – while Max Verstappen’s penalty dropped him to 10th to give Ferrari a extra boost.

This means the Scuderia is McLaren’s main rival once again – on paper at least. If one delves into data, however, the staff at Maranello have little reason to be content.

The introduction of the FIA’s new checks on front wing flexibility was supposed to bring Ferrari’s SF-25 closer to the papaya cars, but McLaren debuted its supposedly stiffer wing at Imola (as did Mercedes and Alpine) and maintained its three- or four-tenth gap on Ferrari – despite a wing upgrade coming to the red car as well. 

No step forward

Charles Leclerc sacrificed qualifying, with just one run in Q3, in the hope of capitalising on two new sets of mediums in the race, but this didn’t pay off – without the safety car and the drama that followed, he would have finished behind Max Verstappen.

The Monegasque admitted this had been the wrong choice, as modern F1 favours track position – so the best possible qualifying result.

Ahead of the Canadian GP, where Ferrari may introduce a new floor and rear suspension that was previously targeted for July’s British GP, the team doesn’t want to keep its hopes up. Even in Maranello, the SF-25 is branded a ‘bad car’, and the next updates are expected to improve the situation without actually turning it around.

The 2025 machinery was supposed to have greater development potential; instead, aerodynamic updates are slow-paced and ideas are scarce. With the latest upgrades not being satisfactory, there may be a level of awareness that the current car won’t go down in history as a memorable one.

These struggles mean that Hamilton’s love story with the prancing horse is already turning sour. The seven-time world champion keeps saying that no upgrades will turn the season around and it would be better to devote all resources to next year’s car, with only team boss Fred Vasseur still showing unwavering optimism regarding the team’s current machinery.

Ferrari will have to make a big decision soon: even though the fight for second place remains wide open and upgrades are in the pipeline, does it make sense to invest any further in the SF-25 ahead of the new technical rules in 2026?