Ferrari Drivers Lewis Hamilton And Charles Leclerc Go Separate Ways on SF-25 Car Setup in Bahrain

Ahead of this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix, Ferrari deputy team principal Jerome d'Ambrosio has confirmed that Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have opted for different setups on their SF-25 Formula One car.

The confirmation arrived amid the team's challenges with the car's performance. Last weekend at Suzuka saw Leclerc get outpaced by both McLarens and Max Verstappen's Red Bull, resulting in a fourth-place finish.

For the seven-time world champion, starting the Japanese GP on hard tires didn't prove to be a successful strategy, and the car's average pace meant he finished P7. Hamilton has yet to replicate the dominant performance from the Chinese GP sprint race, where he started the race from pole position and crossed the finish line first, marking his and Ferrari's first sprint win of the season.

While Leclerc has tried a different setup on his car that made him more comfortable at the Bahrain International Circuit, Hamilton also opted for something different this weekend. Shedding light on the differences, which d'Ambrosio says are small, he said:

"The reality is, it's not that exciting. It's two drivers and they have two different feelings and needs, but when I say that I'm talking about these small differences.

"You go down the paddock and there's no two cars that are exactly the same. One will have a balance a bit more than the other one, and in the end, that's what's happening in trying to fine-tune the car.

"It's early days in the season and both drivers are trying to fine-tune their cars in a way that suits them the best, but we're far from major diverging directions and so on because in the end, all Formula One cars when you design them, they also have a window in which we expect them to deliver the most performance."

Despite the small changes, d'Ambrosio stressed that they will have an impact on track performance. He said:

"That doesn't mean that they don't have an impact on track because driver comfort and being at ease in the car and everything else, it's performance in that, but in the facts of what it means technically, you're speaking about small adjustment."

He added:

"When you bring an upgrade, you always want to make sure that you know it delivers what was expected, regardless of the expected gains. It's important for the correlation, and that's going to be something important for us.

"It's quite a different setting in terms of temperature, in terms of layout, and what we've seen in the last two races, so it would be also interesting to see how things compare in this environment."

With three races ticked off in the 2025 season, Ferrari is placed fourth in the team standings with 35 points.