Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft hopes Ferrari will struggle at the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend.
Ferrari enjoys a more competitive weekend in Monaco than they had expected last time, with home hero Charles Leclerc slightly missing out on his second consecutive victory in the Principality.
That performance has raised hopes that Ferrari can change the season following a slow start to 2025, but Croft predicts the Italian team will be in the more challenging weekend at Barcelona.
“In Barcelona, I don’t think Ferrari will be strong until Ferrari can solve the problems around the rear end of the car and run as low as it needs to run,” Croft told the Sky Sports F1 Show.
“I don’t think I’ve seen any evidence so far that it’s coming, or is coming, and new upgrades are fine.
“But that’s a big engineering job to fix what they think they need to fix. It doesn’t help people leading that project leave when only 90% of that is finished.”
Croft added that Ferrari will soon be forced to switch full attention to developments regarding the 2026 Rule Shake-up and will be forced to effectively give up this campaign.
“They’ll have to switch off this year and think about next year,” he continued.
“I haven’t seen Ferrari approach the bottom. This year is inevitably fast enough to count it. I don’t think it will cause friction with Lewis Hamilton. I’ve seen reports that Lewis might quit at the end of the year. Neither has happened.
“It’s going to be all frustration for what he could have been a Mega-year, so that he joins the new team and joins Charles Leclair’s on the title challenge, that’s going to just not come.”
Barcelona will be a “another game”
Fellow Sky Sports F1 Pundit Bernie Collins considers its competitiveness in the Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya, which consists of a variety of corner speeds.
“A weekend that’s far stronger than we were led by Ferrari to believe,” Collins said.
“We were hearing about how they were poor at a slow rate, but that didn’t exactly happen.
“I think Barcelona will definitely be a different game. There are different corner speeds, which is a truck that actually tests the overall performance of the car.
“I think there is a chance they need to either raise the height of their ride or do whatever it takes to play that car over the full race distance.
“They are waiting for these upgrades to arrive and Barcelona is usually a good place to bring about upgrades.”
