Charles Leclerc: ‘I’m super excited to work with Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari’

Level-headed F1 driver will pair up with his childhood idol next season, but there is more to achieve before then.

Giles Richards
Sat 26 Oct 2024 16:00 BST
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There is an intriguing duality at the heart of how Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc balances the extreme demands of Formula One. It’s more than just being on it when the visor comes off, revealing why he’s one of the sport’s most likable and intriguing people.

The 27-year-old Monegasque made winning the US Grand Prix look easy. He is already in his sixth season, yet when asked to analyze his approach to F1, Leclerc pauses and thinks carefully, maybe realizing that his response is not what many may expect in

A sport that prides itself on its gladiatorial aspect, the big clash of egos and attitudes.”The most important thing as a driver and a team is to be as emotionally flat as possible,” he shares. “When you have a very, very good race, you don’t overdo it. The same applies when you have a particularly awful race. You must maintain as much balance as possible and avoid becoming distracted by the surrounding noise, which can bite you.

“It’s much more true when you’re driving for Ferrari, because the noise level in the team is really high. So when you perform well, things are magnified in a favorable way, and when you do poorly, they are amplified in a

“In a bad way.”

This feels like a suffocating way of operating, and it would take a superhuman feat to pull off successfully, which may spill over into his personal life. So, is he flatlining away from the track? “Not at all.” “Come see me at a padel game and you’ll see,” he says, laughing. “I’m letting myself go, but I adapt to the environment anytime I’m with the squad.

“I’ve been doing this since I was about four or five years old. It’s about maintaining the maximum level of consistency possible because terrible races are unavoidable. It’s about trying to keep them as low as possible.”

For someone so young, Leclerc speaks like a veteran of a long career.

from easy but instrumental in forging his character. In 2017, we met at the Hungarian GP when Leclerc was in F2 and just 19, eyeing a place in F1. He was charming and his talent was already impossible to ignore. A Ferrari junior, he was taken on by Alfa Romeo in 2018 and promoted to Ferrari in 2019. It proved a revelatory season as he outraced his teammate, the four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, and took his first two wins, including Ferrari’s home race in Monza.

He was a world champion in waiting it seemed but, seven years on, is still waiting. Ferrari have failed to produce a title-winning car and Leclerc has wrestled the best he can, sometimes struggling but more often far outperforming the machinery. This season he has three wins and a swathe of podiums, some of which should have been beyond him. Ferrari has surely tested an even temperament. For Leclerc, this is not a simple matter of closing down an emotional connection with the sport he took up as a child and still adores. He was in tears this season on the last few laps of his home grand prix for his debut win in Monte Carlo. When he followed it with victory again at Monza, the overwhelming joy from Ferrari fans moved him but he wanted to make a very personal connection with his mother, who he says is still scared for him when he races. “I was searching for my mum,” he says. “In 2019 when I won she was in the grandstands so it was impossible to share that moment with her but this time she was in the paddock so I could see her.”

There is a compelling professional bond to be enjoyed too. “Whenever you are on the podium, the first thing you do is try to look at every team member and share a moment with them. Because it is the result of everybody’s work, a moment where everybody shares the same emotions.”

In a high-pressure environment where many find difficulty in maintaining an even keel Leclerc speaks of the joy his new dog, Leo, has given him, of bringing him, his family and girlfriend to races, all contributing to making him happy and how that plays a part in performing better. On recent form, it has been paying off and while not a contender in the title fight between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, he has brought Ferrari into contention for the constructors’ title where they trail Red Bull by eight points and McLaren by 48. Moreover they look ready to end the season on a high. The mid-season struggles after an upgrade left them floundering appear to have finally been excised as the one-two with Carlos Sainz in Austin demonstrated.

Under Fred Vasseur, now in his second year as team principal at the Scuderia and whom Leclerc praises as the “perfect person to bring Ferrari back to the top”, there is real confidence led by a straightforwardness and honesty within the team that comes direct from Vasseur’s own personality.

All of which will be music to Lewis Hamilton ears, as he will join Ferrari next season. The pair have long got on well. In 2019, Hamilton inherited a win in Bahrain after Leclerc was denied victory when his engine lost a cylinder while he was leading, but acknowledged his performance. “You drove great,” Hamilton told him. “You’ve got a great future ahead of you.”

It appears unlikely that either driver anticipated sharing that future at Ferrari, so how does Leclerc, who claims he dreamed of making it to F1 and racing against Hamilton as a child, see it? “I do not believe there will be any problems.

“The way of working will be different to Mercedes and this will take a little bit of time to adapt,” he cautions. “But we’re talking about Lewis Hamilton; I’m very confident he doesn’t need advise on that.

“I am quite happy to be working with him. Yes, I’m learning from him, but it’s also a thrilling challenge for me to be in the same car with him.

I want to be a successful driver and demonstrate my abilities. “Both of us will want to beat each other, that’s the way it is in F1, but I’m sure it will be a healthy competition.”

Leclerc is already aware of the buzz, but when Hamilton joins Ferrari, the focus will shift to how the two fierce competitors communicate. Leclerc is unconcerned. After all, he excels at balancing complex dynamics.

“We have a great relationship and I always have a good relationship with my teammates,” according to him. “It’s about a separation between what happens on track and what happens off the track, I won’t have any problems with Lewis, I am sure.”