Lando Norris 'surprised' to see Ferrari so far behind McLaren

You have to go back 16 years to find a trace of an even more chaotic start to the season for Ferrari. At the time, the Scuderia had started 2009 with a double retirement of its drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa, leaving Australia with no points. The 2025 season started a little better with 5 points brought back by the 8th place of Charles Leclerc and the 10th position of Lewis Hamilton, but not enough to ring the bells of MaranelloSailing in 7th place in the Constructors' Championship, Ferrari must quickly right the ship, especially since the performance shown in Melbourne was far from the great hopes seen in Bahrain during the pre-season tests.

"Qualifying was definitely a bit of a surprise." assures Lando Norris, poleman and winner of the Australian Grand Prix. "We expected to be fast, our goal was to be the fastest and to be well placed, but we expected Ferrari to be faster than they were."

"Ferrari's race pace was better than ours in free practice," says Norris

Only 7th and 8th on the grid, the Ferrari drivers compromised their weekend from qualifying onwards by not managing to recapture the performance displayed during free practice on Friday. Fastest in FP2, Charles Leclerc then assured, on Friday evening, that he would aim for pole position the following day., but the Monegasque found himself behind the Williams from Alex Albon and the Racing Bulls of Yuki tsunoda. "I think they finished 7 or 8 tenths behind? But in reality, they're not 7 or 8 tenths behind, far from it." insists Lando Norris. “There wasn’t a single session, whether it was FP1, FP2, or FP3, where they seemed that far back. In their race simulations, they were much closer to us than the others. In fact, I think Ferrari’s race pace on Friday was even better than ours at times. So, we were a little surprised. And I’m sure they were a little shocked too to be that far back. I don’t know why. But it shows how difficult it is. Everything can be going really well and, in an instant, everything can change.”

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Lando Norris's comments corroborate those of Frédéric Vasseur, who was disappointed after the race with his team's overall result. "The result is negative, he regretted last Sunday on Canal+. We didn't come here to do that. Firstly, in qualifying we didn't put everything together, even though I think we had a much better pace than we showed. The strategy wasn't easy, and we made the wrong decisions at the end; we can't hide our heads in the sand. The gamble didn't work, we lost." The Frenchman and his drivers still have 23 weekends to catch up and extract the maximum performance from their SF-25s. Charles Leclerc has assured that a year without winning either title would be "a disappointment", while Maranello has been waiting for the Constructors' Trophy since 2008 and the Drivers' Trophy since 2007. Time is running out to finally put an end to this drought.