Ferrari has arrived at the Bahrain Grand Prix armed with significant upgrades for their SF-25, aiming to reverse a lackluster start to the 2025 Formula 1 season. Languishing in fourth place, 76 points behind championship leaders McLaren, the Italian squad is under pressure to unlock more speed to challenge the frontrunners.
Following a frustrating Japanese Grand Prix, Ferrari’s drivers, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, openly called for updates to keep pace with McLaren, Red Bull, and Mercedes. Leclerc teased that new components were imminent, and Ferrari has now delivered, unveiling a major upgrade package centered around a revamped floor.
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“We’ve got some new bits on the car coming (in Bahrain this week), which I hope will help us to close that gap a little bit,” Leclerc told the media Thursday. “Whether it will be enough to close the complete gap, I don’t think so, I don’t think there’s that in what we’re bringing here.”
The Scuderia Ferrari overhaul targets the car’s underbody to boost downforce, featuring redesigned floor fences at the front and a reshaped leading edge. Ferrari’s technical briefing highlights that these tweaks aim to “minimize downstream losses” for better aerodynamic flow. The upgrades extend further, adjusting the floor edge wings and the rear floor, including a “reprofiled diffuser expansion zone.” The team notes that the “boat-tail and tunnel expansion” have been fine-tuned, alongside optimized “floor edge loading and vorticity shedding” into the diffuser. Even the rear wing pillar gets a subtle tweak with a modified winglet to enhance overall efficiency.
I’m confident that we can close that gap, whether again what we are bringing here I don’t think will be enough but hopefully short-term we will have other things which will help us to be closer. – Charles Leclerc, Ferrari driver
Leclerc, who recently described Ferrari’s season start as “worse than we hoped,” sees these changes as a critical step to salvage their championship fight. Whether this package can propel Ferrari closer to the leaders under Bahrain’s punishing conditions remains to be seen.
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