Scuderia Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were disqualified from Sunday’s race at the Shanghai International Circuit in China. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri won the race from pole after 56 laps.
The announcement came from F1’s governing body, the Federation International de l’Automobile, shortly after the race concluded. Leclerc finished P5 and Hamilton P6, having started P6 and P5 respectively.
“You’ve got to continue to move forward,” Hamilton said after the race. “We had some problems in the sprint race that we needed to try and improve, so we made a couple of changes, but they were clearly the wrong ones. The car was worse in qualifying, and then even worse in the race.”
Both Ferraris had a good start to the race, overtaking Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in P4 on the first lap. However, the pair came together in Turn 1, with Leclerc hitting the back of Hamilton’s car and losing his left front wing endplate in the process. Leclerc chose not to replace his front wing in the pits after it became clear that the damage was actually making him faster than his teammate.
Leclerc chased Hamilton for the first part of the race but failed to pass him. Struggling with his car’s pace, Hamilton suggested swapping positions to his engineer — a move carried out on Lap 21. This maneuver allowed Leclerc to chase Mercedes’ George Russell for P3, but he was unable to pass him.
Ferrari pitted Hamilton for his second stop of the race on Lap 38, anticipating an undercut from Verstappen that never came. Unlike Hamilton, both Verstappen and Leclerc did a one-stop race. Verstappen closed in on Leclerc at the end of the race and passed him on Lap 53, with Leclerc unable to fight and quickly falling back.
“I’m disappointed because I feel like the potential today was here to maybe fight for the win,” Leclerc said. “I really feel like we had a lot of performance in the car. I was quite optimistic with today, but we lost 30 points of downforce with that little bit of contact, so that was a big chunk of performance. But we did a really good job considering that.”
What originally was an 18-point team result dwindled down to zero after both cars were disqualified following post-race inspections by the FIA. Leclerc was disqualified after his car was found to be under the minimum weight required, and Hamilton followed after the rear skid block on his car was found to be under the minimum thickness permitted.
“There was no intention to gain any advantage,” Ferrari stated. “We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again.”
The team walked away from China with 12 points acquired in Saturday’s Sprint race, and they currently stand P5 in the Constructors’ Standings, with 17 total points — 61 points behind the McLaren at the lead.
Round three of the 2025 season will take place at 12 a.m. Sunday, April 6 at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan.
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