Ferrari: Sprint Race as a test to mitigate SF-25’s critical issues | 2025 F1 Chinese GP. Chinese GP: The Sprint format could shake things up on Saturday.

Ferrari needs to react after the disappointing Australian Grand Prix and the Italian side believes it knows how. The first back-to-back race weekends of the F1 World Championship come as early as the second round of the 2025 Formula 1 season, scheduled at the 5.451-kilometre Shanghai International Circuit. The track, located in the Chinese megacity, will host the first of six sprint weekends of the season, at a stage of the championship where teams have yet to gain in-depth knowledge of their respective technical projects.

The three days of collective pre-season testing at the Bahrain circuit in Sakhir and the first Grand Prix of the season, held on an atypical track and in rather adverse weather conditions, have made analyzing the behavior of the cars even more complicated. Needless to say, at the moment, the only certainty is the McLaren MCL39, which, as predicted, has shown enormous potential.

The doubts related to the different work programs carried out by the Formula One teams up until last Saturday’s third free practice session have given way to unequivocal displays of strength, both in qualifying and race pace, in any weather condition. This is why the Chinese Grand Prix will be an important test for everyone, especially for Ferrari, which endured a truly disastrous weekend at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne.

While it is true that the F1 team led by Andrea Stella starts as the favorite even for the first Asian round of the season, the history of the much-debated sprint format shows that the compressed weekend schedule can reward not only the most competitive car but also the team that manages to establish the best baseline setup through simulator work at their respective factories.

Moreover, the ability to make changes to the car after Saturday’s Sprint Race serves as a kind of make-up test for teams that did not start the weekend on the right foot. It is clear that over the course of the weekend, the best cars will dominate the top positions. Like it or not, this format was designed precisely to minimize the sessions that teams dedicate to what is known in technical jargon as “fine-tuning.”

Scuderia Ferrari arrives at the second round of the season with many questions. The positive aspect is that the Shanghai International Circuit will provide much more indicative feedback compared to what was gathered in the Australian Grand Prix. If corrective updates are needed, it will be essential to collect data on tracks that, due to their geometry, highlight any aero-mechanical deficiencies of the car.

Sure, the Chinese F1 track is not on the same level as Suzuka, the third round of the Formula 1 championship, but it does feature very challenging sections, such as the “corkscrew” right after the main straight, characterized by variable-radius corners with two apexes, also on a negative camber. This is a sector where the thermal capacity of the tires will play a crucial role.

The Sprint Race will therefore be a functional test for Sunday’s race. Red Bull showed last year in Qatar how a sprint weekend can be an opportunity when the weekend does not start in the best way. Max Verstappen, despite his dislike for this sprint format, has won 11 out of 18 races over the 100 kilometer distance, which is a statistic that represents over 61% of the events held so far. At this point, it is worth recalling an interesting fact that supports this reasoning.

In the 2024 edition of the Qatar Grand Prix, during the only free practice session, the RB20 single-seater did not go beyond the 11th fastest time with Max Verstappen and even the 18th with Sergio Perez. At that point, the engineers of the Austrian team gave a new meaning to the Shootout qualifying and the Sprint Race. They disregarded the Saturday result, using it solely as an additional test session.

Once the Saturday mini-race was over, Christian Horner’s team completely overhauled the RB20, which, thanks also to the skill of the four-time Dutch F1 world champion, dominated the 300 kilometer race in a rather surprising manner. All of this, ladies and gentlemen, in defiance of predictions that had heavily favored the McLaren MCL38 for Sunday’s race.

The hope is that the Chinese weekend will prove that what happened in Australia was just a setback in Ferrari’s season. However, if that is not the case, why not approach the first sprint weekend of the season the way the Milton Keynes team did last year in Losail? At the very least, it would allow for more time to find a compromise setup capable of minimizing the current weaknesses of the Ferrari SF-25 car.

— see video above —