AUSTIN, Texas — A year ago at Formula One’s United States Grand Prix, Ferrari had the car to beat McLaren and Red Bull.
It wasn’t leading the constructors’ championship at the time – that was McLaren, which eventually clinched the 2024 title with a 14-point gap over the Italian outfit. But it did secure a 1-2 finish, with Charles Leclerc standing on the top step of the podium here at Circuit of the Americas, and it was powering back during the second half of the season, turning its performance around.
This year is a very different story. Ferrari has yet to win a grand prix in 2025, and while Leclerc had secured five podium finishes before the Austin weekend, his teammate Lewis Hamilton was still searching for his first.
Leclerc said after qualifying third for Sunday’s race that this year’s Ferrari doesn’t feel “that different” to last season’s challenger, adding that “it’s just that the overall performance is very poor” and that its qualifying to race pace is “pretty similar.”
But come the end of the grand prix, where he finished third after battling Lando Norris for sustained periods, he described the weekend as “perfect” for Ferrari. But he left feeling he’d “be surprised if we can achieve anything better until the end of the year.”
It shows just how far the team has fallen compared to both its standards and fans’ expectations, considering the preseason hype around Hamilton joining and the progress Ferrari was making a year ago. And it comes at a time when plenty of noise surrounds the team, specifically about the futures of both Leclerc and team boss Fred Vasseur.
“The second part of the season hasn’t been easy,” Leclerc said on Sunday. “There is completely unfounded noise and rumours around the team. And I think to demonstrate we can stay focused on the job in those kinds of situations and be rewarded with a podium is a really nice feeling.”
The on-track situation in Austin
As the U.S. Grand Prix weekend unfolded, Ferrari steadily climbed back into contention. It bounced back from a gearbox issue with Leclerc’s car during Friday practice, recovered across sprint qualifying and the sprint race, and fine-tuned its car in qualifying. It managed to find “a lot more performance”, Leclerc said, which led to a strong race.
To put it into perspective: Leclerc had qualified 10th and finished fifth in the sprint race – gaining considerably in the Turn 1 chaos that took out the McLaren drivers and several others ahead – before his strong grand prix qualifying result. He trailed only Max Verstappen and Norris on the grid.
While he said Ferred fine-tuned its car and altered it to boost his driving style, he added, “A swing of performance like from (Friday) to (Saturday) is still to be understood, to be completely honest.”
What stood in Leclerc’s way of driving in clean air, which is where the Ferrari thrived during last year’s race here, were two of the 2025 title contenders. It would be difficult for Leclerc to pass them, given their cars’ superior performances this season, and so he decided to go with an “aggressive strategy” for the race start.
While the vast majority of the grid fitted their cars with the more durable medium tires in the roasting-hot conditions, Leclerc went with softs.
“My plan was to be first after the first corner. I didn’t quite make that, but at least I gained a position, which helped me a little bit with free air,” Leclerc said, referencing his early pass on Norris. “And that definitely helped our race. I knew it was aggressive, but considering the feeling I had on the hard tire in FP1, I was quite convinced I didn’t want to touch that.
“I was just a little bit worried when my engineer got on the radio on the grid and said I was the only car on softs, basically. I thought, ‘OK, maybe there’s something I didn’t feel right’.”
But Leclerc’s strategy worked. He took a wider line in Turn 1 at the start and snagged second from Norris as they powered through the corner’s downhill exit.
In the Texan heat, it would surely only be a matter of time before his softer tires began falling apart. Yet it took over a third of the race for Norris to pass the slower Ferrari, finally diving by in the braking zone heading into Turn 12 on Lap 21 of 56.
Norris gets it done on Leclerc in the braking zone 🔥
That’s P2 for the McLaren! 🔀#F1 #USGP pic.twitter.com/TzktXDimps
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 19, 2025
Leclerc pitted a lap later, and it became a quieter race. He was then on the more durable medium tire and made his way back to second — though nowhere in reach of Verstappen, who built a healthy lead while he and Norris were battling for so long.
But it wasn’t long before Norris was back in Leclerc’s mirrors. He’d used his younger softs to cut the gap quickly, but when Norris again couldn’t get by quickly, his tires overheated and the McLaren needed to pull back to cool them off before making another charge.
When Norris homed in again as the final laps commenced, this time it didn’t take him long to pick off Leclerc – this time for good. Leclerc’s much older tires were long past their best by then, and he was sliding around significantly as he tried to stay ahead.
And, in a way, it sounded as if Leclerc expected it. The Ferrari driver said, “Lando had four, five laps cooling down the tires, and I knew that when he came back it would be very difficult to keep him behind. I tried, because I managed to do so for quite a few laps (earlier), but then, towards the end, the tires were starting to struggle a bit more.”
While Leclerc finished on the podium, his sixth top-three place of the season, Hamilton is still chasing his elusive first in Ferrari red — something the seven-time world champion said feels “so close, but still so far.” If he does finally clinch that initial Ferrari podium, he will now have taken the most races to do so (19 and counting) of any of the Scuderia’s trophy-winning drivers.
Hamilton does think it’s “a trend moving forward”, noting how he’s “definitely feeling better in the car.” But third and fourth place finishes may be the maximum for Ferrari right now.
“I still want to believe we can win a race before the end of the season,” Leclerc said. “But again, I think we need to be realistic in our situation, and I don’t think we quite have the car to do so. I think this weekend has been perfect for the team, and I’ll be surprised if we can achieve anything better until the end of the year.
“But we’ll take it race by race and see what can be done.”
The bigger picture at play for Ferrari
Ferrari wants to be fighting for wins and championships. That’s a given. But when looking at the current situation, it’s hard to imagine Leclerc or Hamilton finishing any higher over the season’s remaining events than they did during the U.S. GP, given how Verstappen and the McLaren duo have performed this year.
The focus is on sealing second in the constructors’ championship, which Mercedes currently holds. And on Sunday, Ferrari made a crucial 19-point gain in that battle, with both its drivers finishing ahead of Mercedes pair George Russell (sixth) and Kimi Antonelli (13th).
“I’d just say consistency,” Hamilton said, when asked what it would take for Ferrari to achieve that aim. “If I can finish there (fourth), or even get a podium at some point… just finishing ahead of Mercedes is our goal. If I can help the team secure second in the constructors’, that would be a good end to the year.”
Seven points separate the two teams after the Austin weekend, thanks to Ferrari’s 36-point haul compared to Mercedes’ 16. But Red Bull isn’t far off either, largely thanks to Verstappen’s recent commanding performances. Red Bull is now just three points behind Ferrari, and the Dutchman is in the drivers’ championship fight, showing no signs of slowing down. What makes that gap more noteworthy is how Red Bull only really has one car (Verstappen’s) picking up regular big points.
This all comes as there is intense interest in the futures of two major Ferrari figures.
Leclerc faced questions as rumors swirled about whether he’d leave the team he’s been tied to since 2016 (when he joined the Ferrari Driver Academy as a junior). Last Thursday, during his pre-event Austin media session, he said, “I’ve always loved Ferrari so much, and my only obsession at the moment is to win in red, whether it’s now or in the future. And I want to bring Ferrari back to the top.”
Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris do battle during the early stages of the 2025 U.S. GP (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
But he also touched on the larger noise and speculation surrounding the team, adding how he feels there are “too many people speaking things, not coming from actual facts, and it’s just a little bit annoying.”
Not that this is new.
“It’s always been like that. As a driver and as a team, we’ve just got to focus on our things, which is what we are doing,” Leclerc said. “But it’s just not great. It’s not super-nice to see all these things around the team all the time. It’s definitely not a situation we want to be in; that the performance is not at the level where we want to be. But we are all focused on trying to turn that situation around.
“Whenever there is (a) situation where the results are not there, then those rumors always come back around.”
Vasseur’s future is another noise component, particularly around the rumors that Ferrari and former Red Bull team boss Christian Horner held exploratory talks.
Hamilton said last Thursday, “The team have made it clear where they stand in terms of re-signing Fred (back in the summer). Fred, I, and the whole team are working really hard on the future. These things aren’t helpful. Everyone back in the factory is working incredibly hard, focused, and these sorts of rumours can sometimes be distracting.”
Ferrari chairman John Elkann came out with words of support for Vasseur over the weekend, saying in a statement, “I want to express our full confidence in our team principal, Fred Vasseur.”
But Elkann also reiterated a point at the forefront of F1 minds – that Ferrari has to win. His statement added: “I also want to reaffirm the importance of teamwork by everyone to maintain focus on the only goal that matters: always giving our very best on the track.”
With the car-design regulation change coming in 2026, it’ll be a clean sheet for all the teams and a potential shake-up in the competitive order is possible. Securing second in the 2025 constructors’ table would be a good step on the path to Ferrari finally winning again.
And while it did look better across the Austin weekend, that Ferrari still wasn’t winning after it was ending the season so strongly at this stage last year highlights how nobody should get carried away about its future championship chances any time soon.