How Leclerc beat Vettel to be Ferrari's favourite

As Ferrari's hierarchy surveyed the fall-out from the 2019 Formula 1 season, they knew they had to make a decision.

Charles Leclerc had been in the team for just a year. He had started it as an understudy, cast in a supporting role, charged with learning his craft at the feet of the team's nominal leader. He ended it having beaten Sebastian Vettel on every conceivable metric.

Team boss Mattia Binotto, supported by chairman John Elkann and chief executive Louis Camilleri, looked at the lie of the land in F1 and Ferrari's future within it.

Just 22 years old, Leclerc had proven his right to be at the pinnacle of the new generation of F1 drivers, and they'd seen enough to believe he was only going to get better. Binotto saw a champion in the making, and one Ferrari had created itself, through Leclerc's years in its driver academy.

Ferrari needed to secure him quickly. The team offered him a new contract, a commitment until the end of 2024. And Leclerc was only too happy to sign. It was a significant statement, and the message was clear: Leclerc was Ferrari's future, a man considered ready to assume a mantle previously held by the likes of Niki Lauda, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.

There had been no single eureka moment, just an ongoing process that led to one overwhelming conclusion: this kid was very, very good.

Leclerc did this through the sheer force of his performances, his speed, competitiveness, will to win and determination not to be subjugated, his desire to prove that he - not anyone else - should be the main man at the team. He had shown a quiet but steely determination to stand his ground, to use all the tools at his command within the team to get the best out of himself.

Ferrari's relative novice had put the proud four-time champion firmly in his place. Not only that, but he had proved a hard worker and a fast learner; robust, serious, driven and resolute, but humble and with a lightness of touch.

Many of the qualities a grand prix driver requires to succeed were apparent long before Leclerc made it to F1, his strength of character above all

Ferrari saw a natural, easy personality, someone spontaneous, open, fresh and usually happy. An inquisitive character who wanted answers, was curious as to how things worked, with a strong focus on using that information to make himself a better driver. Someone whose learning curve had been almost vertical, and a driver who, once a lesson had been taken on board, never required a reprise. Most of all, Ferrari saw a man whose on-track performances had given all the reassurance needed.

Bested by Red Bull's Max Verstappen in Austria, deprived of victory with a controversial passing move with two laps to go, Leclerc immediately realised he could be more robust in his racing than he had previously believed.

The result - at the next race at Silverstone - was an exquisitely judged display of defensive racecraft in a 25-lap fight with Verstappen that put many in mind of one of the defining performances of a Ferrari hero of yesteryear, Gilles Villeneuve, in his duel with Rene Arnoux's Renault at the 1979 French Grand Prix.

A few races later, Leclerc had echoed a different Villeneuve masterclass, this time at Jarama in 1981, showing unflappability under pressure from Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes on his way to victories in Belgium and Italy, in Monza displaying noticeably sharp elbows to keep the world champion behind.

Yes, there had been some mistakes along the way, and he still had a fair bit to learn, especially on the nuances of setting up a car. But that would come with experience, Ferrari was sure.

Strength in adversity

There always seemed something preordained about Leclerc's rise. Many of the qualities a grand prix driver requires to succeed were apparent long before he made it to F1, his strength of character above all. Leclerc's route to F1 was not an easy one.

His abundant talent meant he was marked out for success from an early age; the challenges came off track. He spent much of his childhood with Jules Bianchi, his godfather, who Leclerc's manager Nicolas Todt says he saw as "a mentor, his hero".

Eight years older, Bianchi was instrumental in Leclerc's development as an aspiring young racing driver. Then Bianchi suffered fatal injuries in an accident in the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix, when Leclerc was just 16.

Rather than sow the seeds of doubt, this emboldened Leclerc.

"There were definitely no thoughts any time in my career to stop because of that," he says. "From the beginning when you go into this sport, you know how dangerous it is. Of course, the cars are getting safer and safer, but when you're going at 340km/h, it can never be safe. This, I knew it from the start. And, yeah, I just wanted then to be good for him because he had taught me many things.

"He had always pushed me forward and helped me to get better, and the only thought I had when this happened was just to do good for him to make him proud."

Less than three years later, with Leclerc now in Formula 2, he lost his father Herve three days before the race at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. He thought about not competing, ultimately decided he should do so in his father's honour, and produced a defining performance, taking pole by more than 0.5secs and winning both races, even if the second was taken from him (a time penalty for failing to slow for yellow flags dropped him to second).

Todt (pictured below with Leclerc at Monza in 2018) says: "Between Jules's death and his dad's death, those two very difficult moments that happened in a very short period of time made Charles a stronger person. You are not supposed to go through that sort of thing when you are 15 or 18 years old."

Leclerc puts his ability to compartmentalise grief down to the fact that, under Todt's guidance, he has been working with a sports fitness company on his mental strength "since pretty early on in my career".

"It was really important," Leclerc says. "I really felt the difference. But you can never really prepare for a loss like that. I don't know; I just tried to focus as much as possible on the race weekend, which was very, very difficult.

Leclerc kept his counsel, said the right things in public, but made clear his intention to force Ferrari into a re-think simply by virtue of proving too quick for them not to

"To be honest, I didn't manage to fully focus, which is completely normal. Practice went very bad, and after that I just asked myself what he wanted me to achieve on a weekend like this, and the answer came pretty quickly - it was that he wanted me to win.

"So I just focused massively on that and finally achieved it by winning race one, race two on track, but then we took a 10-second penalty which dropped us to second."

Fixing his own weaknesses

If a man can cope with such huge life events and carry on so no one would know anything had happened, he is hardly likely to be thrown off course by the professional disappointments that hit F1 drivers in the course of their job.

And so it has proved for Leclerc in his short F1 career so far. He started his first year at Sauber in 2018 with high expectations on him, but his opening three races were shaky and error-strewn, as Leclerc tried to make the oversteer balance he had preferred through his junior career work for him in F1.

The sea change came at Baku, when an enforced change to a more understeer-biased set-up, necessary on a street circuit with so many inviting walls, led to a dramatic change in performance. Leclerc drove superbly to sixth place and never looked back, crushing team-mate Marcus Ericsson over the rest of the year at an average of 0.6secs in qualifying and earning his promotion to Ferrari.

Despite Leclerc's obvious potential, Binotto decided before the season that Vettel would
have priority in what he called "50-50 situations". The reasoning was that the vastly more experienced German could reasonably be expected to produce the stronger overall season.

Some questioned the move, given the number of errors Vettel had made in 2017 and 2018. Leclerc himself was disappointed, but understanding. He kept his counsel, said the right things in public, but made clear his intention to force Ferrari into a re-think simply by virtue of proving too quick for them not to. "Once he wants something," Todt says, "he will never give up."

It didn't take very long. In the closing stages of the first race of the season in Australia, Binotto had to impose team orders on Leclerc to stay behind Vettel as the younger man closed on his team-mate on fresher tyres after a later pit stop.

Two weeks later, in Bahrain, Leclerc was in a league of his own, taking pole position, losing out to Vettel and Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas at the start, but coming straight back at them. Against team orders to wait two laps for further instructions, Leclerc swept straight past Vettel as soon as he caught him into a race of his own, which Leclerc failed to win only when his engine lost a cylinder late on.

Hamilton inherited the win, but the message of the weekend was not lost on him. "You drove great," he told Leclerc in the green room. "You've got a great future ahead of you."

In Baku, Leclerc was again looking peerless, only to ruin his weekend with a crash in second qualifying when he should have taken a dominant pole and victory. "Stupid, stupid," he chided himself on the radio, in an early example of the capacity for self-criticism that was to serve him so well.

There were some bumps in the road for Leclerc - qualifying was relatively weak compared with Vettel in Australia, China and Spain. But Canada proved a turning point. In Montreal, Leclerc realised he needed to change his approach.

"In qualifying, especially, I was doing some mistakes and I was not in the position I wanted to be, mostly on the car set-up," he later reflected. "Trying to follow the track evolution. And I focused on that and I improved a lot.

"It was only my second year in Formula 1. Arriving in such a big team, you're a little bit intimidated. Or I was a little bit intimidated. And to straight away say: 'OK, I want this, this and this' wasn't the way I wanted to start this relationship.

"So at first I wanted to understand the car, try to adapt my driving as much as possible. At one point, I managed to do good things adapting my driving style, but then I felt that there was more performance by trying to put the car a little bit more into my direction. So then I could drive a little bit more naturally, which helped me."

Gradually, a little haltingly, and then increasingly remorselessly, Leclerc stripped away Vettel's privileges, and his accession became inevitable and irresistible

"Charles has the intelligence to be able to address his own weaknesses and to improve them," Todt adds. "It is a great plus and it is one of Charles' big qualities."

Starting in France, Leclerc outqualified Vettel nine times in a row. By the end of the year, he had turned around their qualifying head-to-head from 6-1 in Vettel's favour after Canada (which should have been 4-3 were it not for Baku and a team strategy error in Monaco qualifying), to a 12-9 advantage for Leclerc.

The new boy was directly undermining the champion, and the strain inevitably began to show in their relationship. After Leclerc had taken his long overdue maiden win in Belgium, his ruthlessness was on show in Monza qualifying a week later, when he failed to abide by an agreement for him to tow Vettel on the final qualifying runs.

The steel was already there, but the win at Spa, taken despite the death of Leclerc's childhood friend and rival Anthoine Hubert in the F2 race on Saturday afternoon, led directly to a shift in attitude.

After savouring the cheers of thousands of tifosi on Sunday, Leclerc said: "It was the first weekend when the only thing in my head was winning. Since Wednesday, seeing the support, it was incredible, and the only thing I wanted was to win."

Binotto told Leclerc the win had earned him forgiveness for his qualifying actions. But Vettel was furious, so showed no sympathy in Singapore where, after a brilliant and wildly acrobatic pole lap, Leclerc lost victory to his team-mate when Ferrari inadvertently managed to get Vettel ahead of him at the pit stops when simply trying to vault the German ahead of Hamilton's Mercedes.

Next time out in Russia, it was Vettel's turn to ignore an agreement. He refused to let Leclerc back through after being allowed to tow past the polesitter on the run to the first corner, part of a plan to ensure both Ferraris ran one-two ahead of Hamilton. The team sorted that one out by swapping them around at the pit stops. But although all professed to be getting on, in Brazil the lid blew off the pressure cooker.

In the chaotic closing laps after a late Safety Car period, Leclerc pulled off an uncompromising passing move on Vettel into Turn 1. Vettel sought to re-pass into Turn 4. Leclerc held him tight to the grass, and when Vettel moved across trying to intimidate him out of the way, they collided and both crashed out of the race.

Piling the pressure on Vettel

It didn't take much analysis to see which Ferrari driver had come out on top over the season. Despite starting as the number two, and losing out through team orders calls a number of times, Leclerc had beaten Vettel on points, wins, poles, qualifying head-to-head and average qualifying pace.

Where does his speed come from? A similar place to Hamilton's, as it happens. "He's aggressive and uses a lot of brake to rotate the car, so it's always moving," says Red Bull's Alex Albon, Leclerc's team-mate in GP3 in 2016.

"He has incredible feeling on the brakes. You couldn't be quicker than him in a corner by even half a tenth, and sometimes he'd do laps where he braked incredibly late, the car moves around like crazy and it's like 'wow', as he would always come out quick."

First gradually, a little haltingly, and then increasingly remorselessly, Leclerc stripped away Vettel's privileges, and his accession became inevitable and irresistible. Vettel put a brave face on it, but he's no fool.

At Ferrari's car launch this February, it was Vettel facing all the difficult questions - about his soon-to-expire contract, his future in F1. And he was not happy about it.

"Charles has got a year's experience and, while last year we said Seb would be first driver and Charles second, both have proved they can fight for the best results. They will be on the same level" Mattia Binotto

Leclerc stood calmly to one side, his questions all about the expectations that come from that long commitment from the team.

"It is great knowing I will be driving for Ferrari for five more years but this doesn't mean the results will come," he said. "I will be working very hard. It is a long-term project and it is interesting for myself and the team to be working on such a long contract and build a strong relationship that we hope will bring a lot of success."

A year ago, Leclerc needed to earn Vettel's respect and find his place in the team. Now,
the dynamics have firmly shifted.

"It is a year after," Binotto said. "Charles has got a year's experience and, while last year we said Seb would be first driver and Charles second, both have proved they can fight for the best results. They will be on the same level."

The Ferrari drivers headed into 2020 - a season now in suspended animation - with positions reversed. Leclerc the new main man; Vettel's future clearly lying elsewhere, his status changed. Maranello has a new prince.

Andrew Benson is BBC Sport's Chief F1 writer