[Image: FMT]
What started as a promising weekend for Lewis Hamilton on Saturday, where he secured his first victory for Ferrari in the sprint race, quickly turned into a nightmare by Sunday night.
Both Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have now been disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix marking a new low for Ferrari, just two races into the 2025 Formula 1 season. The disqualifications followed a disastrous sequence of events, and the team now finds itself facing the consequences of an embarrassing mistake that has sent their season spiralling.
Both drivers’ cars failed the mandatory post-race technical checks and Ferrari’s failure to produce a ‘legal’ car for these checks proved a massive blow to the team’s credibility.
The margin of error that led to their disqualifications was surprisingly small – Hamilton’s car was found to have a plank wear measurement of 8.6mm on the left side and 8.5mm on the right, slightly beyond the allowed limit of 9mm. It was only a half-millimetre difference but in the highly precise world of Formula 1, such small margins are all that matter.
Once the issue was brought to the stewards’ attention, the result was inevitable: both drivers were disqualified.
This disqualification, while painful, could have been worse in terms of points. Hamilton and Leclerc had finished in the middle of the pack, so the penalty cost them only a modest 18 points, but it remains a catastrophic outcome for Ferrari. The team’s failure to meet the technical specifications reflects poorly on their management and preparation, especially when considering that this isn’t the first time they’ve encountered such issues.
In 2023, Leclerc was also disqualified from the United States Grand Prix for the same issue. Ironically, Hamilton was also excluded from that race for the same reason, but he was driving for Mercedes at the time. This ongoing issue raises serious concerns about Ferrari’s attention to detail and its ability to avoid repeating past mistakes.
There are, of course, some factors that might explain the errors. The Chinese Grand Prix was the first sprint weekend of the season, which meant the teams had less time to trial various setups. Hamilton admitted that Ferrari made a mistake by experimenting with his car setup ahead of Saturday’s qualifying.
“Ultimately we had a pretty decent car in the sprint, we made some changes and made it worse,” Hamilton explained after the race. “I know not to do that again.”
The team’s decision to lower the ride height of the car, along with uncertain track conditions and tyre issues, pushed Ferrari to the edge of legal compliance, which probably resulted in technical infractions.
Leclerc’s disqualification, meanwhile, was due to his car being 1kg under the required weight of 900kg, another instance of Ferrari failing to meet the minimum technical standards.
Things were made even worse by the “unexpected” nature of the race itself, which turned out to be a one-stop event, catching most teams off guard, including Ferrari.
But it wasn’t just Ferrari that suffered; Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was also disqualified, making it the first time since 2004 that three drivers had been excluded from a single Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Although current issues were only slight ‘miscalculations’, it proves that not even Ferarri gets it right every time. As for Hamilton, he couldn’t have asked for a worse start to the season.
Not sharing in Lewis’ bad luck, Oscar Piastri eventually outran both Lando Norris and George Russell to claim victory in the Chinese Grand Prix yesterday.
Obviously, McLaren got their measurement right.
[Source: Independent]
