The air in the paddock at Marina Bay is thick, not just with the humidity of the tropical night, but with an almost suffocating pressure emanating from the heart of the sport’s most legendary team. The question echoing in every corner of the Formula 1 world is as simple as it is brutal: can Ferrari reverse a season without victories in one of the most demanding circuits on the calendar, or will Singapore merely serve to tragically underscore the limits of their troubled SF-25 car?

As the 2025 season reaches its critical crescendo, the Scuderia has been dragging not only a persistent streak of bad results but a collective feeling of profound dissatisfaction that has intensified with each passing Grand Prix. At this juncture in the championship, with the Singapore Grand Prix presenting one of the few remaining scenarios that could still offer a genuine opportunity for redemption, the Italian outfit is enveloped in an environment where the pressure is multidimensional. It comes not only from external media, rival teams, and demanding tifosi, but also, and more dangerously, from the inside—from its own structural errors and a crippling inability to translate its inherent potential into concrete, championship-defining results.

The most telling statistic of this season is as stark as it is unforgivable for a team of Ferrari’s stature: being one of the ‘Big Four’ leading teams, they are the only one that has yet to achieve a victory. Not once have they managed to cross the checkered flag in first position.

In a team measured solely by titles and triumphs, this deficit is a heavy load that weighs like a leaden slab in the Constructors’ Championship. Currently mired in third place with 286 points, they trail far behind the leaders, a distance that is not just a number, but a direct reflection of a campaign that has been a constant, exhausting fight against their own technical and organizational limitations.

The Temperamental Machine: SF-25’s Deep Flaws

The SF-25 was intended to be the vehicle of Ferrari’s renaissance, a machine to restore Maranello’s glory. Instead, it has proven to be an extremely temperamental contraption, defined by a frustratingly reduced operational yield window and plagued with chronic correlation problems between simulation data and its real-world track behavior. In practical terms, this means Ferrari has been locked in a perpetual cycle of adjusting configurations without ever finding stability. Every new circuit becomes a new experiment where they only rarely manage to hit the optimal setup point for qualifying, and even less frequently for the race itself. This debilitating pattern has been replicated from the very first race, generating a deep-seated frustration among both the engineers who designed the car and the elite pilots tasked with taming it.

Singapore’s GP is far more than just another race; it represents a kind of last emotional border for the team. It is one of the circuits they had internally marked as “gainable”—a word that has been almost unheard in Maranello throughout 2025. The fact that they have not yet tasted victory means that any opportunity now presented is treated as a matter of sports life or death. It is no exaggeration to state that if Ferrari fails here, on a theoretically favorable layout, the rest of the season could easily devolve into a long, agonizing march of resignation.

The Theoretical Advantage: A Climate of Hope

In theory, Marina Bay should be a circuit that plays into Ferrari’s hands. The main reason lies in the nature of the track: it demands a high aerodynamic load configuration, similar to high-downforce circuits like Monaco or Mexico, where the priority is not sheer straight-line speed but stability and traction through slow-speed curves. In this specific type of scenario, Ferrari has, in the past, shown a competitive baseline. Even with all the accumulated problems this season, a valid technical hypothesis points to the SF-25 adapting better here than on other tracks, primarily due to one critical factor: temperature.

Ferrari’s car has shown serious difficulties in bringing its tires into the optimal temperature range in cold conditions. This was painfully evident in places like Baku, where the SF-25’s performance was deeply disappointing against rivals who better managed the cold asphalt. However, in Singapore, that factor flips completely. With ambient temperatures frequently exceeding 30 degrees Celsius and a track that accumulates intense heat throughout the day, thermal management transforms from a major obstacle into a significant asset.

As figures within the team have openly noted, in warm conditions, Ferrari is usually much closer to achieving its ideal performance envelope. That single detail—the ability of the heat to neutralize their chronic cold-tire issue—could completely change the competitive landscape for them this weekend.

The Implacable Reality: Structural Weaknesses Exposed

Yet, not everything favors the Cavallino Rampante. Singapore is also a circuit where the structural stiffness of the car and the configuration of the flat bottom are put to an implacable and unforgiving test. The SF-25 has demonstrated chronic fragilities in this exact area. Its flat bottom tends to suffer premature wear due to a persistent problem with ride height management and vertical oscillations.

This technical vulnerability does not just compromise aerodynamic efficiency; it directly—and catastrophically—affects the car’s ability to absorb the bumps, aggressive curbs, and uneven surface levels of urban asphalt, all of which are common currency in Marina Bay. In such a chassis-punishing circuit, where the suspension components are pushed to their absolute limit, these inherent weaknesses could reappear strongly, potentially derailing any advantage gained from the high temperatures.

Qualifying, therefore, will be a determining factor. Historically, around 80% of Singapore Grand Prix winners have started from the front row. This is where Ferrari faces one of its greatest, most persistent dilemmas. The SF-25 has simply not been a strong car on a single lap. Its tuning for qualifying sessions has been notoriously irregular, and its tendency to ‘under-survive’ in medium and slow-speed corners can quickly become a nightmare on a route where surgical precision at the entrance and exit of a corner defines every single thousandth of a second.

Furthermore, the car’s narrow operating window is a systemic handicap. While top-tier rivals like McLaren or Mercedes can afford to experiment with different aerodynamic loads to dial in performance, Ferrari is often trapped between two compromise configurations, neither of which ends up working perfectly. This phenomenon, acknowledged by the engineers in Maranello, forces them into excruciating tactical choices: prioritizing slow-corner stability over high-speed changes, or vice versa. In Marina Bay, those decisions are not merely marginal; they can define not only the outcome of the race but the immediate future and mood of the entire team structure.

The Duel of Destiny: Leclerc vs. Hamilton

Ferrari has deposited much of its ambition for redemption at Marina Bay onto the shoulders of its two equally talented, yet fundamentally different, figures: Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. These two pilots represent, at this critical point in the championship, not only the team’s best tools for achieving a significant result but also the visible faces of a structure desperately seeking to restore its credibility. What unfolds in Singapore will not depend solely on the machine or the strategic decisions of the pit wall; ultimately, the result will fall to what these two men can extract from a car that has been, throughout the year, an unpredictable creature.

The Singapore GP could be the ideal scenario for a new, unexpected turning point. It is a circuit where experience counts immeasurably, where patience is rewarded with points, and where concentration under extreme, physical pressure is vital. In these three crucial dimensions, few match the enduring brilliance of Lewis Hamilton. His celebrated ability to manage tires, his real-time race reading, and his famous precision in small, tight spaces can turn him into a decisive factor, even if the SF-25 is not the absolute best car on the grid that weekend.

Yet, there is also a latent, volatile tension within Ferrari that could dramatically influence the performance of both drivers. The dynamic between Leclerc and Hamilton has not yet been truly tested in a direct, no-holds-barred struggle for a victory, and Marina Bay could easily become the first real battlefield between them. If the car grants them even a minimal chance to fight for first position, the team must manage the relationship between its two star pilots with extreme care. What is at stake is not just a single victory, but the very internal hierarchy of the Ferrari project, the public narrative of their future partnership, and the immediate stability of their season.

The Strategy Achilles’ Heel

For the stars to align, Ferrari needs a genuine convergence of factors: a favorable layout, warm weather neutralizing their tire issue, two world-class drivers with successful histories on street circuits, and the avoidance of strategic blunders.

But the elements that can shatter all this hope are numerous. The SF-25 has proven to have a perilously narrow operational window. If the team fails to find the appropriate balance from the very first free practice sessions, they could spend the entire weekend chasing balance problems, ride height errors, aerodynamic rebound issues, or debilitating flat bottom fatigue. These technical details, which can be marginal or disguised on traditional circuits, are mercilessly amplified here by the urban asphalt, the aggressive curbs, and the constant demand placed on the braking zones.

If Ferrari manages to place one or both cars in the first two rows, the door opens to a possible defensive masterclass: managing tires, containing the rivals, and keeping a cold head under the lights will be paramount. However, there is the ever-present, terrifying scenario where, even after achieving a good starting position, the team stumbles yet again on its chronic Achilles’ heel: strategy.

The exact moment of the pit stop, the choice between one or two stops, the correct reading of rival rhythms, and the ability to adapt to sudden changes—all those decisions made in mere seconds—have cost them valuable points throughout the year. The danger is not merely that the car does not perform; it is that everything works until one element of the strategic structure falls apart.

This is the narrative that Ferrari must fundamentally break in Singapore: they must prove that they can deliver a complete weekend without a single fissure. They must demonstrate that they can be fast, constant, strategically solid, and, most importantly, emotionally stable. They have, at least for this single, fateful weekend, the raw ability to behave like a champion team. The world waits, breathless, to see if they can execute the surgical precision required to convert hope into reality, or if the lights of Marina Bay will instead illuminate the sinking of their last great ambition for the 2025 season.