Ferrari, from bad to worse: Mercedes surpassed them in Azerbaijan
After 1-2 in Friday’s rehearsals, the Scuderia lost the course, added few points and its pilots could not even fulfill a simple order in the end. The climax: lost second place in builders.
Neither the Oscar Wilde pen could have novel a drama of the size of Ferrari in the Azerbaijan GP, 17th date of the 2025 exercise of F1. The book of the weekend in the street of Baku began with the IRONIC PART: The two SF-25 remained at the start, dominating Friday’s training, with Lewis Hamilton ahead of Charles Leclerc. It was barely essays, but how to avoid illusion in a year of lean harvest and in which he still did not achieve a triumph.
The Rossa Reality Cachetazo arrived on Saturday, in the classificationwhen it was time to put the motor maps to accelerate really and nobody dosed, Ferrari disappeared. Hamilton failed to move from Q2 (it was 12) and Lerccr ended up stamped against the wall without marking record in Q3 (it started tenth). If the second day of activity was complicated, the definition was even worse.
Absolutely relegated in the rhythm, without chances of fighting for the first places, Ferrari dedicated himself to turning, within the points zone, but not in the main positions. The Maranello team engineers chose to throw their cars on the track with different strategies: Lerclerc started with socks and Hamilton, hard. In the last stretch of competition, the English march ninth, behind his partner and the order arrived so that the Monegasco let him pass. The objective was for the heptacampeón to attack the train that integrated Lando Norris (seventh), Yuki Tsunoda (sixth) and Liam Lawson (fifth). Lewis could not overcome anyone and in the last turn the indication came so that Hamilton returned the position to his partner … And not that did well in Ferrari!
“Leclerc, a second and a half of you. This is the last round … let it pass,” was the order Hamilton received from his engineer, Riccardo Adami. Lewis tried to fulfill the indication and that is why he left the ideal trajectory in the line and lessened the march, but did not reach: he crossed forward for 464 thousandths. “First of all, I was obviously faster at the beginning, but Charles had the kindness of letting me pass,” Hamilton said after the race. “In the end, I received the message too late and I was concentrated in the car in front of it, although there was a 0.0001 percent chance of passing itand I still had hopes, maybe. Basically, I raised my foot of the accelerator on the line and frant, but lost for about four tenths … so I apologize to Charles. In the end, we were eighth and ninth, ”he added.
The end of the race marked that Ferrari lost second place in builders at the hands of Mercedes (George Russell was second and Kimi Antonelli, who needed a good performance, fourth). The Rossa was four points behind the arrows. But, if something was missing, the dessert strawberry was on the podium. Carlos Sainz, the pilot unemployed by Ferrari to perform the pompous hiring of Hamilton, celebrated his third place and sprinkled the members of Williams as a champagne. Meanwhile, the heptacampeon, no trophy dressed in red in 17 races was still taken …
