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Ferrari has revealed it will launch its 2025 Formula 1 car at the Fiorano test track in Maranello on February 19, with team principal Fred Vasseur characterising it as more than 99% new given less than 1% of the parts will carry over from this year.
While teams are working to minimise the overall development effort put into 2025 in order to maximise work on the 2026 cars for F1’s major regulations overhaul, Ferrari has promised significant changes. While such ‘percentage new parts’ claims are inevitably made off-the-cuff with a lack of precision, that last year the ’24 car was characterised as 95% new indicates how hard Ferrari is pushing.
Speaking at Ferrari’s annual end-of-season media lunch, Vasseur confirmed the date of the 2025 launch and revealed a little about Ferrari’s approach to the car. While there will be plenty of evolutionary elements, Ferrari is expected to be aggressive in the steps it’s aiming to take.
“We’ll know in [pre-season testing venue] Bahrain,” said Vasseur when asked how many risks Ferrari is taking with the 2025 car.
“Sometimes you don't feel that you are taking risks and you realise a bit later that was very risky. The car will be a completely new one. I think we have something less than 1% of the common parts that we will carry over. It's a different project, but it's true for everybody.”
Ferrari’s Fiorano launch will follow one day after the F1 season launch event at London’s 02 Arena on 18th February.
There, drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will appear, along with Vasseur, although what’s unveiled there will only be a show car in the 2025 livery.
The next day, the real 2025 car will appear in a behind-closed-doors event at Fiorano. The car will then be shipped to Bahrain for pre-season testing.
Vasseur stressed that Ferrari has no plans to make a big deal of Hamilton’s first run in one of its cars, which will take place before the launch with both TPC running [testing of previous cars] and also a Pirelli tyre test set to happen before the launch and pre-season testing.
He is keen for Hamilton and Ferrari to be focused on the preparations for what it hopes will be a title-chasing season.
“No, we have to be focused on the season,” said Vasseur when asked about how Hamilton’s first runs in Ferraris will be dealt with.
“It will be a very tight period between the first day and launch, it's a matter of weeks, and I want to have everybody focus on performance.
“We will have the launch of the championship, we will have the launch of the car. For me, it's already two events, and it's far too much. It's far enough. I want to be focused on development performance and not to do the show.”
Vasseur isn't getting carried away with any favourite tags either despite Ferrari's strong end to the 2024 season in which it scored more points than any other team after the summer break.
"I don't care because you can be the favourite in January, February, [but] if you are not there on the first race everybody will forget this," Vasseur said.
"I think that the fight between the top four...I think it's changing from race to race, from perhaps track to track, compound to compound, or temperature to temperature.
"It means that every single parameter is making a huge difference. When you have four teams and it's one or two tenths, the fact that we were in a good shape in November won't impact the result of Melbourne 2025.
"We have to start from scratch. For sure, we have a reference, but it will be a new fight, a new championship and from January I will have a look on the future and Melbourne and not what we did two months before."
