Ferrari had a disappointing weekend in Qatar, with the team grappling with a series of unexpected setbacks. Having been comfortably in second place in the Constructors’ Championship, the Scuderia has slipped to fourth after a desert weekend that yielded just four points.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc both struggled to make an impact in the sprint and Grand Prix, and the team was unable to convert its pre-season promise into results at the Lusail International Circuit.

Team principal Frédéric Vasseur offered a surprising explanation for the poor performance, citing tyre pressures as the root cause, but also slamming his own team for failing to cope with the conditions imposed for the Qatar Grand Prix.

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Ferrari provides a bizarre explanation for problems

Why did Ferrari struggle so much in the sprint and Grand Prix at last weekend’s Formula 1 race in Qatar? Team boss Frédéric Vasseur has come up with a rather surprising answer to this question.

Just three races ago, Ferrari was in second place in the Constructors’ World Championship, on course to finish second behind McLaren. However, due to their poor results in Qatar, the Scuderia has now slipped to fourth place, scoring just four points during the desert weekend consisting of a sprint and a Grand Prix.

Excluding the double retirement at Zandvoort, Ferrari has never performed worse this season.

But why did Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have almost no chance of scoring points? According to Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur, the answer lies in the prescribed tyre pressures, which his crew failed to meet.

“As a team, we have to try to understand what we did wrong this weekend,” Vasseur told the media after the Qatar Grand Prix, offering a surprising explanation: “From what I understand so far, it has to do with tyre pressure and the specifications. We were driving as if we were on balloons all weekend and had trouble dealing with it.”

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Vasseur said that Ferrari had done a “worse job”

Because tyre wear is so high at the Lusail International Circuit, Pirelli responded ahead of the F1 weekend by adjusting the prescribed tyre pressures. For safety reasons, they did not allow the teams to drive more than 25 laps on the tyres.

‘That was the same for everyone, so it means we did a worse job than the others,” Vasseur admitted, acknowledging Ferrari’s mistakes.

“We struggled from the first to the last lap of the race. Today was perhaps marginally better, but only insignificantly so. That’s part of the explanation.”

The Scuderia had “strayed too far from the path, while the others were just fine-tuning. If you start miles away, you’re dead,” said Vasseur, referring to the close gaps that caused the Reds to lose many places in qualifying because they couldn’t get their car into the right working window.

Leclerc and Hamilton only qualified in ninth and 18th place in the sprint and tenth and 18th place in the Grand Prix. Leclerc then finished eighth in the race, while Hamilton finished 12th; neither scored any points in the sprint.

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Ferrari is failing at the most basic level

By Vasseur shockingly admitting the team’s failings, the Ferrari boss is openly criticising his own team, admitting that the Scuderia had struggled with one of the most fundamental aspects of race preparation.

This is a sobering admission for a team of Ferrari’s stature. While other teams were able to fine-tune their setups and remain within the prescribed tyre specifications, Ferrari fell behind at the most basic operational level.

This left both Leclerc and Hamilton at a disadvantage from the outset. This weekend has shown that talent and ambition alone cannot compensate for failures in execution. For Ferrari, the lesson is clear: unless the team can master even the most basic elements of race management, championship contention will remain out of reach.

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NEXT ARTICLE: McLaren’s bizarre reaction to Piastri post Qatar calamity

How papaya rules cost McLaren dear and Piastri is abandoned come the end of the race – One ironic soul in the TJ13 family observed of McLaren’s efforts in Qatar, they clearly have shares in Netflix ‘drive to Survive’ Formula One TV series. The calamity in the middle eastern desert is the second week in the row the Woking based team have gifted Red Bull and Max Verstappen the chance to slash the deficit in the drivers’ championship and the reaction from team boss Andrea Stella reveals papaya rules were at the heart of their huge mistake.

With Pirelli mandating no tyre could be run former than 25 laps, the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix was effectively forced into at least a two stop race. Teams strategised into the night on Saturday to determine their responses to various outcomes during the race on Sunday.

Qatar has a 100% record of seeing a safety car deployed and when the F1 gods wrote the script for the Grand Prix, lap 7 was the perfect time for Bern Mylander to take to the track. A coming together between Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly left carbon fibre strewn across the lap at turn two. It was immediately obvious to all that a safety car would be deployed to cover the clear up.

 

When “papaya rules” went bad

The leaders were less than a quarter of the way around the lap at the time and had plenty of opportunity to debate what to do. Lap 7 was the earliest opportunity for any driver to pit and retain the ability to just two stop and given the limited laps the tyres were allowed to run, the two remaining 25 lap stints were never going to create excessive tyre degradation.

McLaren have lived and died by their ‘papaya rules’ this season which insist the team will be fair to both its drivers when it comes to racing and the championship. For their strategy team any pint stop under a safety car would need to ensure both drivers could be serviced without one being disadvantaged.

The team even switched their drivers around on track, following one being disadvantaged by the pit stop crew taking five seconds to service Lando Norris in Monza. Their extreme ‘meddling’ has been a paddock talking point all year and the issuing ‘consequences’ to Lando Norris for a racing incident in Singapore saw some F1 analysts question the team’s grip on reality.

When the safety car came out on lap 7 in Qatar, Andrea Stella revealed the team strategists didn’t believe they could stack Norris behind Piastri without disadvantaging his position as one of the reasons they failed to pit for fresh rubber…READ MORE ON THIS STORY