There is a fascinating dichotomy at the heart of how Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc balances the exceptional demands of Formula One. It is more than simply being on it when the visor comes down and reveals why he is one of the sport’s most endearing and absorbing characters.
In a dominant victory at last week’s US Grand Prix, the 27-year-old Monegasque made it look easy. He is now in his seventh season, but when asked to consider his approach to F1, Leclerc pauses and thinks hard, perhaps aware his answer is not what many may expect in a sport that sells itself on its gladiatorial nature, the grand clashing of ego and attitude.
“The most important thing as a driver and a team is to be as emotionally flat as possible,” he says. “Whenever you have a very, very good race, you don’t get too much with it. When you have a very bad race, exactly the same. You have to be as balanced as possible and not get carried away by the noise around, because that can bite you.
“It’s even more true when you are driving for Ferrari, because the noise around the team is at a very high level. So whenever you do well, things are exaggerated in a good way and when you do badly it’s exaggerated in a bad way.”
This feels an awfully stifling way of operating and a superhuman feat to carry out successfully that has a danger of bleeding over into his life. So is he flatlining away from the track?
“Not at all. Come and see me at a padel game you will see that,” he says, laughing. “I am letting myself go but then I adapt to the situation whenever I am inside the team.
“It’s something I’ve done since I was four or five years old. It’s about consistency at the highest level possible because you can’t avoid bad races. It’s about trying to minimise them as much as possible.”
For one so relatively young, Leclerc speaks as a veteran from a career that has been far 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 seems unlikely that either driver at the time thought they would be sharing that future at Ferrari so how does Leclerc, who says he dreamed of making it to F1 and racing against Hamilton when he was a kid, view it? “I don’t think 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 says. “But we are speaking about Lewis Hamilton, I am pretty sure he does not need advice on that.
“I am super excited to be working alongside him. To be, yes, learning from him but at the same time it’s such an exciting challenge for me to be in the same car as such a successful driver and to be able to show what I am capable of.
“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 knows about noise already but when Hamilton arrives at Ferrari it will reach an altogether different pitch and the scrutiny on how the two fierce competitors interact will be immense. Leclerc, however, is unconcerned. Balancing complex dynamics is, after all, his forte.
“We have a great relationship and I always have a good relationship with my teammates,” he says. “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.”
