Last Updated on October 9 2025, 11:55 am

Leclerc unbroadcasted rage at Ferrari – For the 2025 Singapore Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc made the kind of start that reminds you that raw talent still counts: he overtook his teammate and even Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes early on, then defended his position stoutly for much of the evening. However, defending your position isn’t the same as controlling the race. The quartet ahead, George Russell, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, spent the night trading pace and pit windows, while Leclerc remained in their exhaust plumes without ever truly joining the conversation.

This became clear during the pit phases. Piastri, who is still leading the championship, rejoined the race ahead of Leclerc’s attempted undercut pitstop. This more than any isolated sector time underlined the uncomfortable reality that Ferrari weren’t just behind; they were way behind. When a rival can stay out, spend their resources, and still beat your best trick, the deficit isn’t just tactical, it’s structural.

 

The radio messages that weren’t broadcast were telling

If you watched the world feed, you might have wondered why Leclerc’s lap times sometimes sagged like a hammock. But if you watched his onboard footage, you wouldn’t have. There was a persistent message on his radio: ‘Lift and coast’. Not a sprinkle. Not just a few corners to cool the tyres. He was asked to do it a lot, and he was not happy about being the rolling embodiment of fuel-saving chic in a series that advertises ‘push to the limit’.

What the TV direction sampled didn’t capture the cumulative frustration. Off-air, at least off the primary broadcast, Leclerc’s tone was pure, exhausted straight talk. You can sense the underlying meaning even if you mute the clip: “Don’t even complain, for fuck’s sake. We are doing 200m of LICO all the time… I can’t fight if I’m spending 200 metres not fighting.”

 

LICO, spelled out without the engineering degree

Lift and coast, or LICO, if you prefer your misery in acronym form, is an age-old tool. You feather off the throttle well before your usual braking point, roll the car in and apply the brakes less.

You save fuel and temperature, and sometimes protect a fragile plank if you’re riding low. You also give the car a better chance of reaching the end of the race. Every team does it at times. In Singapore, however, Ferrari had to make it a way of life, especially late in the race, to manage brake and ride height exposure on a track that punishes both. It’s the kind of management that turns a hunter into a hall monitor.

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Brakes, planks, and the SF-25’s unfulfilled promise

Ferrari have insisted all year that the SF-25 has potential, which the simulator claims is hidden somewhere inside the car, like a gym membership that you keep paying for. Outside of cameo weekends, China’s Saturday sprint sparkle, Monaco and Hungary’s qualifying spikes and Baku’s practice flashes, the car has been a mood board of constraints on track.

It doesn’t like being run low without risking plank wear. It doesn’t like sustained heat in traffic. And on Sunday night, it didn’t love its brakes. Leclerc had to nurse his and Lewis Hamilton’s eventually wandered off the job entirely, earning him a penalty for exceeding the track limits and the kind of five-second penalty that neatly summarises a Sunday: avoidable in theory, inevitable in practice.

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Quotes that sting because they’re true

Leclerc didn’t hide from the hierarchy. He called Ferrari the fourth fastest team, ‘solidly’, and if that adverb felt like a punchline, it also felt accurate.

Mercedes have found a step. Red Bull rebooted their form five races ago. McLaren never left the conversation. Despite their efforts and a few smarter strategic choices recently, Ferrari still look like a team whose design compromises have followed them into a race where compromise is a losing hand.

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The missed Singapore calling card

Marina Bay usually suits Ferrari perfectly. They took pole position in 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023, and won in 2019 and 2023.

This should be one of those circuits where you look quick even if you aren’t the best in the field. The fact that it wasn’t in 2025 made the result feel even worse. Add in the track’s kinship with Baku’s stop-start rhythms and the double disappointment is compounded: two places circled on the calendar as ‘should suit us’ are now filed under ‘did not’.

A recurring theme, recounted with the resigned affection of long-suffering fans, was the emotional toll of supporting Ferrari. ‘Why do I even like this team?’ asked one Reddit poster.

And yet, amid the irony and bruised humour, a serious point was made by many: if Leclerc wants to win the title, can he do so here? Not when he’s spending laps as the ambassador for thermal management. Not when Mercedes have found a step up, McLaren are executing with cold-steel competence and Red Bull are still cashing in, even when they’re imperfect.

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Strategy footnote, not saviour

It’s worth noting that Ferrari did try to use Hamilton’s stops to pressure Antonelli. This kind of proactive decision-making has been lacking in previous seasons, suggesting a pit wall less preoccupied with “inventing”. However, if the chassis demands LICO and the brakes cannot withstand a full push, there is a limit to what the strategy can achieve. You can’t beat physics with an early tyre change.

Somewhere else in the mixed zone, Leclerc estimated that they lost roughly fifteen seconds to the leaders late on. Then, with a racer’s honesty, he corrected himself, saying that even that doesn’t fully reflect it.

When you manage the brakes from the first lap to the last, the stopwatch tells one story, but your hands on the wheel tell another. The whole day felt like that: numbers that don’t quite capture the experience of driving the least self-destructive version of your car, rather than the fastest one.

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Why Marina Bay magnifies flaws

Singapore exposes the flaws you hide on wide circuits. The braking zones are frequent, the average speeds are low and the tyre and brake heat is relentless. If you’re marginal on ride height, the bumps will give you away. If your cooling is marginal, the humidity will do the rest.

Ferrari were lacking in all the wrong areas. The SF-25’s conceptual compromise, fast in theory, finicky in reality, could not be overcome by fine strategy or perfect pit work. Leclerc’s defence against Antonelli was admirable. In the broader picture, his night was a study in running at the pace set by your weakest link.

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So what now?

The team has two tasks, unfortunately scheduled at the same time. One is to stop the bleeding in the remaining rounds and find mechanical or set-up changes that reduce the need for chronic LICO, enabling Leclerc to drive aggressively in a productive way, if only occasionally.

The other task is more fundamental: to ensure that the 2026 concept is not just a re-skin of this year’s compromise. When things go wrong in Singapore, it’s a lesson disguised as a race. This year’s lesson was simple to understand but difficult to implement: if you have to manage so much, you can’t race as much.

Leclerc’s comment that ‘we are now the fourth team’ wasn’t a tantrum. It was accounting. Fourth place is where you end up when you’re good at everything except the one vital thing: consistent corner entry. He’s entering his prime with the reflexes of a scalpel and the patience of a safety inspector. In other words, if you hire a concert violinist, don’t give them a mute and ask them to play Paganini.

Was this just Singapore being Singapore, or did we witness the clearest proof yet that Ferrari are currently living by the law of LiCo and dying from a lack of raw, pushable pace?

 

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