Charles Leclerc given Ferrari SF-25 honour as Lewis Hamilton made to wait
Image credit: Scuderia Ferrari
Charles Leclerc will be the first to drive the new Ferrari SF-25 on Tuesday, it has been claimed, with Lewis Hamilton forced to wait for his turn in the team’s F1 2025 car.
Ferrari will officially present the SF-25 car – previously codenamed Project 677 – on Wednesday morning before holding a shakedown test at the team’s Fiorano test track.
Charles Leclerc to drive Ferrari SF-25 car before Lewis Hamilton
The run will see Ferrari follow in the footsteps of customer team Haas, Williams and McLaren, who have all held shakedowns at Silverstone, the home of F1’s British Grand Prix, over recent days.
Leclerc and Hamilton, who recently arrived from Mercedes on a multi-year contract, will both be allowed to complete 100 kilometres of running with the SF-25 ahead of F1’s official pre-season test in Bahrain.
The Fiorano shakedown will see Hamilton return to the venue of his on-track debut as a Ferrari driver last month, with the seven-time World Champion completing 30 laps behind the wheel of the team’s 2023 car in damp conditions.
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A report by Italian publication Auto Racer has claimed that Leclerc, who is entering his seventh full season as a Ferrari driver, will be handed the honour being the first to drive the SF-25 with running expected to get underway at approximately 0930 local time on Tuesday.
Hamilton will then take over for the afternoon session for his first taste of the 2025 car.
Ferrari enjoyed their strongest season in some time in 2024, falling just 14 points short of Constructors’ Champions McLaren as Leclerc and Hamilton’s predecessor Carlos Sainz claimed a combined five victories.
Despite the success of last year’s car, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur recently confirmed that the SF-25 will be a “completely new” car for the final season of the current regulations.
Development of the SF-25 has been overseen by Loic Serra, the former Mercedes engineer who effectively replaced Aston Martin-bound Enrico Cardile as Ferrari’s technical director upon his arrival at Maranello last October.
Serra is understood to be close to Hamilton having worked with the 40-year-old during his peak years at Mercedes.
A number of design changes are expected to feature on the SF-25, the most significant of which will be a return to a pullrod front suspension layout for the first time since 2015.
The switch will see Ferrari follow the same design route as McLaren and Red Bull, with a pullrod front suspension thought to bring a significant aerodynamic advantage by increasing airflow to the underbody, which generates a significant proportion of the car’s overall downforce under F1’s ground-effect rules.
Cardile was believed to have been sceptical over the importance of suspension to the current ground-effect cars, telling media including PlanetF1.com at the launch of Ferrari’s 2024 car that the team found no significant performance differences when directly comparing a pull-rod and pushrod layout.
His move to Aston Martin, which was announced last July, is understood to have opened the door for Ferrari to make the change to a pull-rod layout.
It has been speculated that Hamilton’s arrival has also been a key influence behind the move with his driving style closer in nature to Leclerc than Sainz, who was forced to make way for the seven-time World Champion at the end of last year.
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Sainz drove Williams’ new FW47 car for the first time last Friday and later told media including PlanetF1.com that Ferrari’s title hopes have “increased” as a result of Hamilton’s arrival.
Asked if Hamilton could bring the title back to Ferrari, Sainz said: “Honestly, I don’t know.
“I’ve never been team-mates with Lewis, so I don’t know what he’s capable of doing. I’ve never seen his data.
“I’ve seen Charles [Leclerc] and I know how good Charles is, but I’ve never been team-mates with Lewis.
“And the only way you can more or less evaluate a driver is when you’re their team-mate and you see what they’re capable of doing.
“When I judge by results and his background and what he’s achieved, I can only say there is a very high chance that obviously he is going to be competitive at Ferrari.
“But like everything, it will all depend on how well you can adapt to a car, how well you can adapt to a team and in which moment your team-mate is in.
“There are so many variables that it is impossible for me to predict.
“I can only say when I left Ferrari, I did feel the team – both Ferrari and Charles – were ready to fight for a World Championship.
“And with Lewis joining, that chance only got increased.”
Ahead of the launch of the SF-25, Hamilton and Leclerc will appear at London’s O2 Arena later today (Tuesday) to pull the covers off Ferrari’s new livery for the F1 2025 season.
The new livery, which will appear on a showcar, is widely expected to carry a deeper shade of red compared to the 2024 machine.
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