That is the claim made by Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur, as seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton makes the move from Mercedes to unite with Charles Leclerc, both Ferrari drivers and the team going into F1 2025 with title glory on the agenda.
While it was McLaren’s Lando Norris applying the pressure on Max Verstappen – who duly secured his fourth consecutive World Championship in F1 2024 – Ferrari also came back strong after a mid-season slump triggered by their Barcelona upgrades, ending the season with five grand prix wins.
The Constructors’ title race was a far closer affair from Ferrari’s perspective, the Scuderia missing out on the crown to McLaren by 14 points, but with the slate wiped clean for F1 2025, Ferrari are hopeful that this will be the year when their title drought – ongoing since 2008 – ends.
The optimism is great news for Hamilton, who makes the huge move from Mercedes as his push for a record eighth World Championship continues.
Asked by Sky F1 if Hamilton and Leclerc could beat Verstappen in the F1 2025 title race, Vasseur replied: “Yeah.
“If you have a look at this season [2024], I think Charles scored the biggest number of points after Monza, or something like this, when we started to react and started to do a better job on our side.
“It means that everything is possible, it’s just a matter to put everything together to minimise the number of mistakes.
“It’s true that on this season, the long season, 24 events that we have always up and down. But what is positive for us is that we had a tough journey around June, July, and as a team, we were able to react and to react quickly. And this is encouraging.”
However, if Ferrari are to return to the F1 summit, then Vasseur expects to encounter fierce competition along the way.
More than just a straight fight with Verstappen, the Ferrari boss expects McLaren and Mercedes to also feature in the F1 2025 title picture.
“It’s true that we did a good 2024 season,” Vasseur added, “at least much better than 2023.
“Racing is going in the right direction and reliability, pit-stop, strategy, number of points scored during the season, something like plus 60 per cent, number of wins. We are going on the right direction.
“But the most important is the last step, and we missed the title for 14 points. It’s not in Abu Dhabi that we missed something.
I think it’s much before and if you want to fight next year for the championship, you have to do everything perfect.
“The fight will be tight between the four teams. I’m sure that Mercedes and Red Bull will be back. McLaren will be still there.
And it means that we have to improve where we were between this season and to fine tune this.”
Like Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes also will field a new driver line-up in F1 2025, with Liam Lawson replacing Sergio Perez at Red Bull, while Mercedes replaced Hamilton with 18-year-old academy graduate Kimi Antonelli.
McLaren contiue with the pairing of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri for F1 2025.
