As Lewis Hamilton celebrated his maiden Ferrari (sprint) pole at the Chinese Grand Prix on Friday afternoon, his boss Fred Vasseur was left struggling to explain his team’s surprise Formula 1 turnaround.
A week on from a disappointing Australian GP that had left the team scratching its head about where its pace had disappeared to on Saturday, it was similarly unsure about why things were so good here in Shanghai.
With McLaren looking to be in a class of its own after Friday morning's free practice session – as Lando Norris ended up with a 0.454s advantage – Hamilton’s Ferrari came alive in sprint qualifying to secure the top spot for Saturday.
That result so soon after the Melbourne struggles was in itself hard to explain – even taking into account that McLaren had messed up with its SQ3 strategy – but the journey to sprint pole only served to further confuse things.
Hamilton had topped SQ1 with a 0.184s advantage over Norris, was two-tenths adrift of his McLaren rival in SQ2 as he ended up fourth, before he then just pipped Max Verstappen in SQ3 by 0.018s.
Vasseur admitted these performance swings were hard to explain, and Red Bull was equally confused about things as it looked to be nowhere before SQ3.
However, the conclusion from both of them was that perhaps everything happening right now was down to tyres.
“Shocked is not the right word, but it's true that the day was a bit difficult to read," explained Vasseur.
"McLaren was in front this morning. In Q1 we were in front, Q2 they were mega, and Q3 we are right on the pace.
“We didn't change the car between sessions. So I think it is linked to the tyre management. If you are not in the right window, you are struggling a lot.”
Vasseur's comment comes in the wake of opinions being voiced that McLaren’s advantage in Melbourne was all down to better tyre management.
Norris and Oscar Piastri were able to better look after the softs in qualifying to dominate sector three of the Albert Park circuit, and then could keep their inters more alive in the opening stint of the race.
But that advantage seemed not so prevalent here at the newly resurfaced Shanghai track where thermal degradation was not really as big an influence over single lap pace.
Peaky tyres?
An unexpected shake up of the order being attributed to tyres – and teams struggling to explain why things worked or did not – can often hint at rubber having some peaky characteristics.
This is something Pirelli does not think is the case right now.
Instead, it suggests that what we are witnessing is simply a case of teams lacking experience on how to get the best lap time from the new 2025 construction and compounds.
Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra said: “The working range is higher compared to the old range, so I don’t think the tyres are peakier.
“But I think the teams, with a slightly new structure, and the completely new compounds, they have to know the product.
“Some teams, like Ferrari for example, also have a new suspension on the front axle compared to last year's and this has an effect on tyre performance and behaviour. So they are still working on how to better extract the performance.”
As the learnings converge, the field could close up and things become more predictable.
Gusty performance
Another underestimated impact according to Pirelli on shaking up the order was the impact of wind on the cars – with the gusts of around 25km/h at Shanghai making things difficult for drivers.
The current ground effect cars are especially sensitive to the wind, and a blast at the wrong moment can trigger sudden oversteer – which serves to slide the car, overheat the tyres and have an impact on the rest of the lap.
“The wind is affecting a lot the balance of this generation of cars,” added Berra. “So it's pretty easy to suffer some snap oversteer, make a mistake, and then you lose the correct window of the tyres.
“Then it takes some time to recover the performance and to gain again the grip level that you want.”
The four race theory
Perhaps what Hamilton’s pace has confirmed though is a belief that Ferrari has held on to since the Australian Grand Prix – that one dominant performance from a rival does not a season make.
Sure, without the intervention of rain and safety cars in Melbourne, McLaren would likely have cantered to a dominant win there, but such a level of advantage was not a rare thing even during the super close 2024 fight.
Vasseur has said a few times now that the lessons of the last four dry races last year point to individual dominance not necessarily being a true reflection of overall competitiveness.
More from Chinese GP sprint qualifying
- Hamilton's 'gobsmacked' reaction
- Edd Straw's trackside verdict of a struggling Liam Lawson
- An unusual stewards summons for Williams
Rewind to the end of last year and, despite so little performance difference between the top four teams, Mexico (Ferrari) Las Vegas (Mercedes), Qatar (Red Bull) and Abu Dhabi (McLaren) all had different winners that looked they were a step above the rest.
Vasseur added: “It is up and down not just for us but for everybody right now – and it is exactly the same as the last four races last year when you had four teams that were able to win by 30 seconds track to track depending on the tyres.”
As teams begin the chase to unlock the secrets to getting the most out of the tyres, Pirelli thinks Ferrari may be on to something.
“I agree on something that Ferrari said," continued Berra. "It is that very little differences in car set-up or adjustment, or a small improvement on aero balance, etc, can make a big difference because the teams are very close to each other.”
Could the reality be that shocks like Hamilton’s Ferrari turnaround become the norm in F1 2025 as the tiniest of factors end up having a huge impact on results?
