“That will be the headline!” Charles Leclerc exclaims as a smile spreads across his face.
The Ferrari driver has sat through enough interviews in his seven years in Formula 1 to know when he has been asked a leading question, and he is now in the habit of calling them out.
The question wasn’t necessarily unfair, but it was only ever going to elicit one answer. Midway through our interview, conducted last month in Azerbaijan, Leclerc made clear that Ferrari would target the title in 2025.
That in itself is nothing unusual — Ferrari targets the title every year — but as the famous Italian team teeters on the cusp of a 16th straight season without a championship success, the follow-up question was whether he truly believed that target was realistic next time round?
“Yes,” came the resolute answer. “It is.”
A slightly awkward moment of silence followed before Leclerc laughed and, correctly, predicted the answer would form the lead quote in this article.
But it’s the reasoning as to why Leclerc thinks Ferrari is on the brink of a breakthrough, not so much the quote itself, that is most interesting. Especially as the stakes are set to rise even higher next year with the arrival of seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton as his teammate.
Putting his faith in Vasseur
Since Leclerc started at Ferrari in 2019, the closest he’s come to a championship was 2022, when he started the year in strong form but lost momentum by mid-season. As Ferrari faltered and became stuck in a development cul-de-sac, Max Verstappen and Red Bull emerged as the sport’s dominant force and swept to comfortable victories in both drivers’ and constructors’ championships.
The 2023 season saw Verstappen double down on his dominance, while Leclerc, along with the vast majority of the F1 grid, failed to win a race. At the start of this season, the green shoots of recovery started to emerge at Maranello, but so far have only blossomed into three victories, with teammate Carlos Sainz‘s win in Australia preceding Leclerc’s victories in Monaco and Monza.
Meanwhile, rivals McLaren have leapfrogged Ferrari to become Red Bull’s biggest threat. Lando Norris, and not Leclerc, is now hunting down Verstappen’s lead in the…
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