Charles Leclerc orders Ferrari to do better after a chaotic F1 2025 Miami GP as he makes a demand to the Italian team to act more robustly on strategy, following avoidable friction with Lewis Hamilton.
With the Scuderia aiming to turn their season around in a bid to catch Mercedes and Red Bull in the constructors’ championship, they had the chance to limit the damage at the Miami International Autodrome by catching Kimi Antonelli ahead.
However, indecision from Fred Vasseur’s pit wall left the both drivers on the back foot and at risk of losing position to Carlos Sainz’s Williams behind, as the team struggled to prioritise swiftly.
Hamilton, who had better pace on the medium tyres, was forced to push harder to keep up with his colleague in a bid to get past and then look at catching the Mercedes ahead; and potentially Alex Albon too.
However, the Prancing Horse’s strategists took too long to make the call to swap and forced the seven-time champion to use too much life from his Pirelli tyres so that when he got past, he had no pace to push on.
Then the man from Monaco came back at him as the medium tyres faded in comparison to the hards, and once again the pit wall delayed their decision making. Ultimately, this allowed Antonelli to escape being caught by 1.5 seconds.
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So a frustrated Leclerc makes a Ferrari demand after the chaotic events at the F1 2025 Miami GP, calling for the team to get their performance together from an operational perspective.
“We need to do better that’s for sure,” Leclerc told members of the media, including Total-Motorsport.com. “Today was not ideal and was far from maximising out potential but we’ve got to regroup as a team and be better.
“I just think we maybe should have discussed a little bit more before the swap. Obviously, you’re trying to go to the end with those tyres so I’m trying to do a good job with my tyres and then everything is tricky, and I did not expect Carlos to be so close.
“So, all of this made the situation trickier. And as I said, we ned to do a step and we need to be robust enough so that whenever we find ourselves in those situations, we do better.”
Leclerc admits frustration caused by slow pace in Miami
It’s important to note that none of this frustration came in a battle for the victory or for the podium. They were racing over sixth position in Sunday’s race, far from the expectations of Formula 1’s oldest team.
Their worst performance of the campaign to date, Ferrari were fifth quickest behind McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes and Williams, and finished a mind-boggling minute off the lead behind Oscar Piastri.
Leclerc admits this contributed to his frustrations over the radio rather than a personal issue with his engineer of the team.
“There is the frustration already that I was fighting got eighth and I was not making any gains,” Leclerc added. “And I was struggling with the car.
“So, there is the frustration of that and all the rest, and it all adds up. So, the radio doesn’t always, but in this case probably, the radio isn’t always the biggest picture.”
