Will Ferrari turn their season around?

Miami Grand Prix Venue:Miami International AutodromeDates:2-4 MayRace start:21:00 BST on Sunday Coverage:Live commentary of practice and qualifying online and BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra; race on BBC Radio 5 Live and live text updates on BBC Sport website and app Formula 1 heads to the United States this weekend for the Miami Grand Prix, the sixth round of the 2025 world championship. Last time out in Saudi Arabia, McLaren's Oscar Piastri won his third race of the season to take the lead in the drivers' standings. A year ago, Miami was the scene of Lando Norris' first F1 victory. Before this year's race, BBC Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions. Would it be fair to say Lando Norris is faster than Oscar Piastri, but Piastri is a better racing driver? – Rob The comparison between McLaren team-mates Norris and Piastri - as drivers, and as personalities - isone of many interesting aspects of this season. That's because they are such contrasting people. Piastri is the epitome of solidity. Nothing seems to faze him. Even the weekends when he is a little off Norris' pace he seems to take in his stride. AsMax Verstappen pointed out in Jeddah, he is very "solid" and he rarely makes mistakes. Norris, on the other hand, wears his heart on his sleeve. He seems to be a little more prey to the twisting fortunes of life. He beats himself up about his weaknesses. And he seems more prone to small errors that can have an impact in a title campaign. That was happening last year, and it's still happening this. Last year, the question asked above would have been considered fair comment. Norris was definitively faster than Piastri in 2024. He out-qualified him 20 times to four, at an average of 0.147secs. And he won four races to Piastri's two. Yet Piastri's race-craft was plain for all to see - for example in his superb overtaking move on Norris on the first lap in Monza, or to take the lead and eventually win against Charles Leclerc in Baku. But this season? Piastri has three wins and two poles and Norris one of each. Piastri is 4-2 ahead in qualifying at an average of 0.185secs a lap. And he's leading the championship despite his unfortunate escapade on the wet grass in Melbourne, which dropped him to ninth at the flag having been challenging Norris for the lead from the start. Norris is incredibly fast. But there has never been any doubt that Piastri's highs were at least as good as the Briton's. Australian Piastri came into this season setting himself a target of accessing them much more consistently. So far, he is bang on target. Add that to his robustness, and he is going to make a tough title rival for anyone. Do you think Max Verstappen can sustain his amazing run in a car that some have labelled as "fourth fastest" or has he been helped by the characteristics of the tracks visited so far? – Steve Very few people in F1 doubt that Verstappen is the all-round best driver on the grid, and that's because his performances have been so strong for so long. The Red Bull driver has been operating at a consistent level of excellence since, basically,the 2018 Canadian Grand Prix,the race he finally ironed out the series of errors that blighted his start to that season. So there is no reason to believe that's about to change. He simply always seems to get the best out of his car, apart from on the odd occasions when he allows tangles with other drivers to get the better of him, such as in Mexico and Hungary last year. As for the Red Bull car, on average qualifying pace, it's second fastest to McLaren by 0.177secs so far, and ahead of the Mercedes and the Ferrari. Of course, Verstappen's performances are a factor in that statistic - it's his car that is the fastest Red Bull. But is he definitively faster over one lap than Charles Leclerc and George Russell? He may be, a bit. He may not be. But would he be, for example, consistently 0.135secs a lap faster than Leclerc in qualifying - the gap between Red Bull and Ferrari this year? No one knows for sure. And the answer can only be subjective. But few doubt Leclerc's pace over one lap. So far, the Red Bull has been a fast car, in Verstappen's hands, on certain types of track. It is quick in high-speed corners, and slow. But it lags behind McLaren in long, medium-speed corners, which emphasise its often inconsistent balance. That's why Verstappen was quick in Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia, but not so in China and Bahrain. Red Bull believe they can fix their issues with some upgrades that are due soon, perhaps for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in two races' time. But McLaren are hardly likely to stand still in terms of development. Verstappen will get the very best out of the Red Bull, and stay in the title fight as long as he can. But as Fernando Alonso pointed out recently, it's very difficult to sustain a season-long title challenge with a car deficit. Can Ferrari turn this season around and be in contention for either championship? – Laura After five races this season, Ferrari have a sprint victory in China, courtesy of Lewis Hamilton, a single grand prix podium finish, thanks to Charles Leclerc in Saudi Arabia, and lie fourth in the constructors' championship, already 110 points behind leaders McLaren. Their car is the fourth quickest on average on raw performance - 0.312 seconds a lap slower than McLaren in qualifying. It's fair to say this is significantly below their expectations. Team boss Frederic Vasseur predicted over the winter that this season would be as open as last year, that the advantage would swing between the top four teams from race to race. And there is no secret that Ferrari were expecting to start the season in a competitive position and mount a title challenge from the off. Vasseur believes they can turn their season around. He has repeatedly pointed to last season, and the fact that they were in a less competitive position at the same point in 2024 but transformed their car and came close to winning the constructors' title at the end of the year. They also made an effective job of developing the 2023 car, which was vicious at the start of the season, but much better by the end of it. An upgrade is due soon, although Ferrari have not said at which race. The complication for Ferrari is that they have two sizeable problems. The first is the performance of their car. The second is the performance of Hamilton, which could turn into a major distraction if the seven-time champion cannot improve after three dismal races in Japan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. If neither of those improve soon, the pressure will start to mount. Lewis Hamilton described his Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as "horrible" after finishing seventh, 31 seconds behind team-mate Charles Leclerc Why do the regulations change just when the field is beginning to close up in competitiveness? The new regs for 2026 seem like a lottery for teams who either nail or fail them, leading to a dominant team and those lagging behind. Stable regs = competitive racing. – Matt F1 has always changed its regulations from time to time. It's an inevitable and necessary part of the sport. Often in the past, it has been because the governing body felt the need to intervene in some way. Perhaps because the cars were getting too fast or dangerous, such as at the end of the last ground-effect era in 1982, or when Ayrton Senna was killed in 1994. Or to change an aspect of racing that was no longer considered desirable, such as when refuelling was banned for 2010. Or to add an aspect that was felt to be lacking, such as when wider, faster cars were introduced in 2017. And the engine rules have also often changed, again for various reasons. This time, the starting point was the engine rules. F1 and the FIA wanted to make the sport more attractive to new manufacturers. So they set up some working groups involving the manufacturers and came up with the 2026 rules. These retain 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrids, but simplify them by removing the MGU-H, which recovers energy from the turbo and is highly complex and was considered a barrier to new suppliers. They have also upped the electrical capacity so that about 50% of the total power output will come from the electrical part of the engine, and will run on 100% sustainable fuel. It has worked. Audi came in - which was the idea behind changing the rules. Porsche in the end did not. But Ford has come back, in partnership with Red Bull. Honda is staying when it was going to pull out. And General Motors is entering next year, too, although its engine won't be ready until 2029. There was already a desire to refine the chassis rules, to fix some of the issues that have arisen with the 2022 ground-effect regs. But the new engine rules required further changes. It became clear that recovering sufficient energy to supply the batteries was going to be a problem. So the rule-makers turned to moveable aerodynamics, reducing drag on the straights so the cars were in the braking zones for longer. Wrangling is still going on about this topic, although the rules are not expected to change significantly - for example by limiting the electrical deployment in races, as some are pushing at the moment - as there is a blocking majority preventing it. Yes, this might open up the field, but that often happens with new rules. But it will close again. It also provides opportunity for a shake-up of the competitive order, which is often regarded as a positive. Seeing as Mercedes dominated the first eight years of the engine regulations when the V6 engines came in, do you see them building that sort of dominance again from the new regulations? - Keegan Just because Mercedes nailed the last new engine rules in 2014, does not necessarily mean they will do so again in 2026. Basically, Mercedes achieved that because they invested more money and resources sooner into those rules than their rivals. The other manufacturers have learned from that experience. Having said that, the word in F1 is that Mercedes are currently best placed for the new rules. Many believe that what's motivating the current debate about the engine rules - whether it bechanging them again earlier than originally planned,ortinkering with the 2026 rules- is founded in the concerns of Mercedes' rivals - especially Red Bull - that they may face a competitive deficit next year. One interesting angle to emerge in recent weeks is that senior sources say that the FIA's single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis is telling teams and manufacturers that the governing body doesn't want engines to be a performance differentiator in the future. But that raises a major philosophical question. Why not? Engines have always been a performance differentiator. It's called motorsport, after all. Cars don't move without engines. And who decided this? Was this agreed with the other stakeholders first? It appears not. This will likely run for a while. Send us your question for F1 correspondent Andrew Benson