Ferrari Below Expectations on Friday in Spain. And Hamilton Lashes Out: "Undriveable Car"

With the entry into force of the new technical directive on wing flexibility, Barcelona could represent the crossroads of this 2025 world championship. In fact, the teams are required to make changes to the single-seaters and adapt the rigidity of the wings to the new regulations. Among the most anticipated is obviously Ferrari, already indicated by some as the team that will benefit most from this new introduction. Hamilton had promptly covered the situation in the media day: "What I can tell you is that I didn't notice any particular differences in the simulator. In general, we will have to be good at adapting, a bit like what happened when, on the contrary, the teams started using flexible wings". However, the adaptation process at Ferrari seems to be proceeding slowly for the moment, because it was Hamilton himself who summed up the Friday of free practice at Montmelò with a lapidary phrase croaked on a team radio that to call pessimistic is perhaps an understatement: "The car is undriveable". After the sessions, he explained: "It was a complicated day for everyone, with the car's behaviour difficult to interpret and performances that were mixed. We made some changes in FP2 that allowed us to collect data to work on tonight. Now we will focus on analysis to improve for tomorrow."

After the two free practice sessions on Friday, we saw a Ferrari with two faces. In FP1, the two drivers showed off a good pace on the softer compound, which however they did not confirm in the afternoon . The different asphalt temperature, lower than in the morning, and the use of the medium tyre resulted in an inconsistent race pace lap after lap. Leclerc returned to the pits several times to change the set-up of the SF-25, trying to find the feeling he had in Free Practice 1, but failing in the mission. The same goes for Hamilton, who ended up blowing up on the aforementioned team radio. Despite Leclerc's 4th and 5th times and Hamilton's 3rd and 11th, the signs are not encouraging.