Has Leclerc hitched his cart to the wrong prancing horse? | RACER

Charles Leclerc is not happy. No expertise in psychology is needed to recognize that, or to understand the reasons why. He recently described himself and teammate Lewis Hamilton as ‘passengers’ in a car from which they can no longer get anything out, as the last vestiges of hope of salvaging anything from a bitterly disappointing season have faded.

But it’s bigger than just 2026 for Charles Leclerc, who feels the silent ticking of the clock getting a little louder as he turns 28e birthday lurks. In F1 terms he is now middle-aged, and he got there without ever driving a car good enough to challenge for the world championship.

There is no doubt that he is capable of doing so. Most drivers on the grid believe they can, and I’m sure they’ll all say so, but Leclerc has proven it with consistently excellent performances in machines that are sometimes good but never great. Not only has he demonstrated prodigious ability since his early days in karting and continually refined it to the point where he is rightly regarded as one of the best in F1, but he has also shown that he can go toe-to-toe with F1’s current top dog, Max Verstappen.

Remember the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix, during the brief period in the first part of the season when the Ferrari looked like it was a real title contender, outsmarting Verstappen in a straight battle for victory late in the race? He doesn’t always come out on top, but the fact that there have been occasional flashpoints where the two went head-to-head where he held his own has long made a title fight between the two seem like their destiny. You can’t blame Leclerc for fearing he’ll never get the chance to fight Verstappen, or anyone else, for the title because he hitched his cart to the wrong prancing horse.

Leclerc first joined Ferrari in F1 in 2019 for his second season, after just one hugely impressive midfield season at Sauber. He defeated four-time world champion teammate Sebastian Vettel, albeit by then a driver disappointed by his own experience of Ferrari’s underperformance, politics and failures, and despite being pushed hard at times, was generally the stronger Ferrari driver during Carlos Sainz’s four years alongside him. He has also been extensively watched by Lewis Hamilton so far. That means Ferrari is without a doubt his team, and has been that way for some time.

The question is whether it is a team you really want to manage. By the standards of most, Leclerc had a successful time there, winning eight races and finishing second in the world championship in 2022. But those are the stats of a good Grand Prix driver, and Leclerc is more than that. The proof is in his qualifying marks, which some wrongly use as a stick to beat him with. Of his astonishing total of 27 pole positions, only five have converted into victories. Some argue that this indicates a qualifying specialist, a driver capable of spectacular laps at the limit, but limited in racing conditions. However, that is not Leclerc. It is true that today he is considered by many to be the fastest over a lap in F1 and that is backed up by a string of remarkable pole positions. No one can dance on the razor-thin limit as consistently as he can, not even Verstappen.

There are cases where this has been the result of an extraordinary lap in a car that is not the fastest, especially on street circuits, but often it is the result of a car that could have been fastest in qualifying but did not have the race pace to stay at the front. He can dance on the boundaries of physics, but like all drivers he is still bound by them and on race day the car reverts to the mean. Yes, he has had to work on improving aspects of his game such as tire management, but he has done so well and put together a strong body of work on Sunday.

The jury is still out on whether Leclerc can win a championship against the likes of Verstappen in similar machines, but only to the extent that there are always doubts until a driver finds himself in that situation. He has met all the requirements so far, has the respect of his colleagues and deserves the opportunity to test himself.

Moreover, he has to do that as a competition animal, and that makes this year so difficult. This year he has often spoken with regret about the sky-high expectations following Ferrari’s strong 2024 and the near miss in the Constructors’ Championship that disappeared in the early months of this year. Concerns began to manifest during testing when the Ferrari didn’t look strong, were confirmed by the early problems and replaced by the hope that upgrades, especially the rear suspension tweaks introduced at Spa in July, would at least allow some good results to be achieved from 2025 onwards.

He admitted during the recent Singapore Grand Prix weekend that if “you don’t see progress all year round, it’s not easy” and that “it takes a lot of energy” to keep the frustration under control. Disappointing performances there and at the previous event in Azerbaijan, where he played a major role in his own struggles by crashing out in Q3, appear to have knocked the remaining wind out of his sails.

Drivers are all too aware of how difficult it is in modern F1 to put yourself in a position to challenge for a drivers’ championship. Leclerc will look enviously at Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri at McLaren, no doubt feeling that he is better than both and deserves that quality of machine. He will wonder whether Ferrari can really deliver such a car and will no doubt try to trade his desire to stay with the team he loves long-term for the knowledge that he cannot simply leave his career to chance. Ferrari has not won a world championship since its constructors’ victory in a record drought in 2008, and Leclerc’s faith in Fred Vasseur’s revolution will be shaken this year. He only has to look at Fernando Alonso for a warning of what happens when you end up in the wrong team.

Alonso’s place as a great in F1 legend is assured, but the numbers don’t do him justice compared to the stats of Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and his old rival Michael Schumacher, thanks to his last victory twelve years ago. Regardless of whether you blame Alonso for poor decision-making, burning bridges or just bad luck, it shows how easy it is to freeze yourself out of contention for titles. That Alonso fell out with Ferrari just before returning to victory, leading to 2018 and a car that might have given him a chance at the championship, is also a warning to have a lot of confidence in your judgment if you want to leave Maranello, given its prodigious potential.

So where will Leclerc’s thinking currently stand? At the moment, he can only shape his future once he knows where Ferrari will be in 2026. He will have an idea of ​​where it might be, but realistically it’s impossible to be sure and it won’t be until 2026 when the 2026 cars, with their brand new powerplants and dramatically revised chassis rules, hit the track that any conclusions can be drawn. Even then, there is a possibility that performance profiles will appear all over the map, meaning it will take some time for a clear pattern to emerge.

But once ’26 settles in with a small but significant series of events, he will know. If Ferrari looks bad, the basis for the entire regulation cycle will be turned upside down and Leclerc will probably be able to add more fallow years to his age. The exact length of his contract is unclear, but it will run until at least the end of 2028 and will put Leclerc in his early 30s. Ferrari must regain its confidence in it in early ’26, otherwise it will certainly be forced to look elsewhere.

At this point it is impossible to say where he will go. Leclerc may map the landscape in early 2026 to understand which are the most sought-after teams and where there may be opportunities, but that is not known at this time. Any team in F1 would be interested in him, the question is how the other chess pieces are arranged. Therefore, the question will not only be whether he should leave Ferrari, but also where he should go.

Leclerc’s dream will be that Ferrari is the place to be. He has been on the books since being signed by the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2016 and dreams of taking his place in legend as Ferrari World Champion. If he does, it will have a similar impact to Michael Schumacher ending a 20-year drought in the Drivers’ Championship when he won the championship in 2000. Currently, this year marks the 18th of a similar dry spell dating back to Kimi Raikkonen’s title in ’07. That’s how important Leclerc can become in Ferrari history.

What is clear is that he must make an objective and sober decision. Careers in F1 are short and if he is absolutely sure that Ferrari will not give him the machines, he must move not only to have a chance at the title, but also to avoid the risk of stagnating as a driver if he remains in an environment in which he has lost confidence. The hope will be that he doesn’t have to take this dramatic course of action and that Ferrari can recover next year, leaving 2025 as nothing more than a blip. That’s not impossible, despite widespread expectation that the Mercedes engine will be the strongest (that hasn’t been proven yet), while the ’26 car will be the first to be designed under the technical direction of Loic Serra.

One thing is certain: Leclerc will continue to perform as well as he can in what has been only the fourth best car overall this year, despite still being in the hunt for second place in the Constructors’ Championship. And as he does, he will feel the gentle pressure of time increasing in intensity almost imperceptibly, as he awaits what he will still feel with absolute conviction: his destiny to win the world championship.

He hopes the mystery will be solved by supplying Ferrari, but he must be less confident that this will happen in the future than ever before.