McLaren's championship emphasizes Ferrari's 2025 disappointment

The entire Formula 1 paddock got to watch McLaren celebrate a constructors' title Sunday with six races to spare, but the real sting was likely felt next door in the Ferrari garage.

Although people often said the phrase with sarcasm, 2025 was supposed to be Ferrari's year. Lewis Hamilton's arrival was billed as the final spark for a team that took the 2024 constructors' title fight down to the last race against McLaren. But what was supposed to be a dream season in which Ferrari would conquer its rival and bring a championship back to Maranello for the first time since 2008 quickly became an all too familiar nightmare for the Tifosi.

Ferrari sits third in the constructors' standings with less than half the points of McLaren. The Italian side is also 27 points behind Mercedes and only eight points ahead of Red Bull. Adding insult to injury, the Prancing Horse is on track for its first winless season since 2021. After leading F1 in podiums last year with 22, Ferrari has only five this year.

And while McLaren reached the peak of its resurgence with the dominant MCL39, Ferrari's SF-25 has been a major letdown. The Scuderia failed to build on the momentum of last year's challenger, which outscored every constructor from the 2024 summer break to the end of the season. For whatever reason - whether it's the suspension, planks, or brakes - Ferrari's car cannot sustain the pace to compete with a front-runner.

McLaren has been collecting wins by the bunches, with Red Bull and Mercedes grabbing the leftovers with multiple victories each. As the rest of the grid fights for results, Ferrari seems stuck chasing potential. The Italian outfit has led only 11 sessions this season, with eight coming in practice and two in sprint formats.

Despite all the struggles, Ferrari's most significant issues stem from its belief that its car still has more to offer.

In September, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur joked that his biggest frustration with the SF-25 was "McLaren." Although Vasseur acknowledged that the outfit could always do a better job, he mentioned that he didn't feel it had done anything "massively wrong" while comparing Ferrari to the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull.

The idea that Ferrari would be right up there if not for McLaren overachieving only passes the smell test if you ignore rookie Kimi Antonelli's struggles hampering Mercedes and Max Verstappen earning 94% of Red Bull's points.

Though it's a small sample size, Ferrari's position in the pecking order since returning from the summer break makes it abundantly clear: the Scuderia is nowhere near the big three constructors. Instead, it leads a secondary tier that includes Williams and Racing Bulls, Red Bull's junior team.

Points since the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix

The overall standings provide a convenient picture that masks Ferrari's competitiveness, but it's far from the truth. Perhaps that's why it felt so fitting that its 2024 title rival got to celebrate in Singapore, while the Maranello team's final sight of the weekend was watching Hamilton cut corners on the circuit and struggling to drive because of a massive brake failure.