The good news for Ferrari is its comprehensive Bahrain upgrade package appears to be working. The bad news is it's still nowhere near enough to make a fist of challenging McLaren.
Upgrades have been in limited supply thus far, with few teams registering any novelties coming into 2025's fourth race weekend in Bahrain. Ferrari led the upgrade chart with a sizable package that included a rework of the floor all the way from the frontal edge to the floor fences and the diffuser at the rear of the car.
Those helped Charles Leclerc take fourth in second practice, on par with George Russell's Mercedes and ahead of Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, yet still half a second behind the leading McLaren of Oscar Piastri. Hamilton was further back in eighth, but was upbeat about the new floor he had at his disposal.
"The upgrades are definitely working," the seven-time world champion said. "A big thank you to everyone back home for working so hard on bringing the upgrades because it's never an easy thing.
"It's a lot of work that goes on in the wind tunnel and a lot of work that goes on in fabricating and putting together these floors, so it's just good to see that we're taking steps forward and we're trying to now extract more from it. I hope that we can make the right steps overnight."
Given the usual fog of war surrounding Friday practice, Red Bull's performance in particular must be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. But what is undeniable is that McLaren is well ahead, as much as it might like to play down its advantage on the hot and abrasive Bahrain circuit.
"We're just not fast enough when we look at the McLaren, they are just on another planet for now," Leclerc sighed. "It's annoying but it's the way it is, and it actually motivates me to try and close that gap as soon as possible. They are incredibly fast.
"[The upgrades] are positive, but unfortunately the gap to McLaren is still big. We've got to maximise the car potential that we have for now. If that means finishing third, fourth, fifth, I don't know what that will be, but we'll have to take it.
"I hope that at one point we'll be back at being the fastest car on track and there it will be a matter of maximising the car again. But for wins, and not for third anymore."
Leclerc still expects Verstappen to be the papaya cars' closest challenger, but thinks Ferrari and Mercedes will be evenly matched: "With Mercedes it seems that we are pretty much there. With Red Bull it's a bit more difficult.
"I think Max had one less set of tyres compared to us in FP2, so he's probably a bit in front. But there's still some performance to be found on our side by maximising the car and the upgrade, and we'll see where that leads us."
