Glum Ferrari Spanish GP forecast made amid ‘big engineering job to fix’

Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft is expecting Ferrari to struggle at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.

Ferrari enjoyed a more competitive weekend than expected last time out in Monaco, with home hero Charles Leclerc narrowly missing out on a second consecutive win at the Principality in second, while teammate Lewis Hamilton recovered from a grid penalty to take fifth.

That performance has raised hopes that Ferrari could turn around their season following a lacklustre start to 2025, however Croft has predicted the Italian squad will be in for a more challenging weekend at Barcelona.

“I’m not expecting Ferrari to be strong in Barcelona, until they can solve the problems around the rear-end of their car and running it as low as they need to run it,” Croft told the Sky Sports F1 show.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the evidence so far that that is coming, or has come. Maybe with new upgrades they’ll be fine.

“But it’s a big engineering job to fix what we think they need to fix, not helped by the person leading that project leaving when only 90 percent of it had been completed.”

Croft added that Ferrari will soon be forced to switch their full development attention on the rules shake-up for 2026 and effectively give up on this campaign.

“There will come a time that they will just have to switch off this year and think about next year,” he continued.

“I don’t see Ferrari getting to the bottom of it, necessarily in a quick enough time to make it count for this year. Not that I think that’s going to cause any friction with Lewis Hamilton. I’ve seen reports that Lewis might quit at the end of the year. I don’t see that happening either.

“It’s just going to be frustrations all round for what could have been a mega year for him joining a new team and Charles Leclerc carrying on with a title challenge, it’s just not going to come.”

Barcelona will be ‘a different game’

Fellow Sky Sports F1 pundit Bernie Collins also thinks the competitive picture will be different at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, which is made up of varying corner speeds.

“A much, much stronger weekend than we’d been led to believe from Ferrari,” Collins said.

“We’d been hearing the stories of how they are poor at slow speed and that didn’t exactly come to fruition.

“I think Barcelona will definitely be a different game there. There is a multitude of different corner speeds. It is a track which really tests overall performance of the car.

“I think there is a likelihood they are going to have to raise the ride height or do whatever they need to do to get that car to perform over the full race distance. I expect the performance to drop a bit but maybe they’ve resolved the issues that they’ve been having through the year.

“They are waiting on these upgrades to come and Barcelona is normally a good place to bring upgrades.”