The risk in Leclerc’s Ferrari F1 engineer swap

Ferrari is facing much difference for its first home Formula 1 race of the 2024 season – the returning Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. The SF-24 is set for its first major upgrade at Imola, following the early unveiling of its various changes in a filming day/FIA spray guards test at Ferrari’s Fiorano circuit.

Given what McLaren achieved following its own first development twist last time out in Miami, the pressure is on Ferrari in the battle to close on Red Bull. But there’s a smaller change occurring at the same time – one that can also mean the difference between winning and losing.

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Charles Leclerc will have a new race engineer for the Imola event onwards. His long-term engineer, Xavi Marcos, has been moved on to what Ferrari calls “other important company programmes”. We are checking with the team exactly what this means…

The driver-engineer relationship is pivotal in modern F1. It’s not as simple as it sounds, with a whole team covering tyre specialists, aerodynamicists, engine engineers, controls engineers all feeding into the messages one person relays to the driver. They all must speak up in the clinical but still intimidating engineering debriefs before and after each session on race weekends, plus those at the factory.

For Leclerc this change follows a series of fractious moments in his relationship with Marcos – one that had a very public following thanks to F1’s TV incorporation of interesting radio messages. Plus, post-event, online sleuths will often follow the cockpit camera feeds to fuel social media frenzy for individual drivers regarding smaller exchanges.

This was how the pair’s “original line” misunderstanding at the recent Chinese GP really leaked out – it wasn’t played out in that race’s main broadcast. Here Leclerc couldn’t understand the request, and at one point confused ‘original’ with ‘horizontal’. This led to Marcos declaring, with a whiff of exasperation: “Just forget it, it's last lap”.

Leclerc will have to adapt to a new voice on his team radio at Imola

Photo by: Erik Junius

Marcos had also gained internet meme fame regarding Ferrari’s various strategy shambles from its title-contending 2022 season. The “we are checking” element really started gaining traction once the Scuderia decided to include its drivers’ thoughts more widely in its in-race strategy calls that year – following the embarrassments of Monaco, Silverstone and Hungary.

But even when things were going well, there often seemed to be the potential for further tense moments between Leclerc and Marcos.

When the Monegasque driver claimed pole for last year’s United States GP, Marcos’s “lap time deleted” message left Leclerc with a “heart attack” moment and he “punched the steering wheel with my helmet” – before the clarification that his engineer had meant Max Verstappen’s off-track slip. Leclerc’s irritated insistence: “Tell me the name before!” spoke volumes.

Such a high-profile personnel change is not without risk.

The driver-race engineer relationship is something F1 teams take extremely seriously. There are typically pre- and mid-season bonding camps to enhance communication and decision-making, while some squads look to experiment with the personnel at hand. In 2018, Williams rotated two race engineers each between its cars, then driven by Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin, to ensure each side of its garage benefitted from the pooled experience.

But Leclerc is unlikely to need to take his new race engineer out for dinner after days working in Marenello, as his team-mate Carlos Sainz did in 2019 when then racing for McLaren, as the replacement is Leclerc’s current performance engineer: Bryan Bozzi.

Such a high-profile personnel change is not without risk. In addition to the fame element of driver-race engineer relationship, altering it matters deeply internally too at any team.

So far, Ferrari hasn’t offered any explanation for this decision, but expect Leclerc to be asked about it when he faces the media at Imola on Thursday. Indeed, it was during the pre-event press conference in Miami where Valtteri Bottas explained his similar engineer change at Sauber from that event onwards was "not in my hands".

Valtteri Bottas has also had a race engineer change since the start of the season

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

But it was Bottas’s clamped demeanour that suggested he was unimpressed with a call Sauber has made to start blooding the structure that will operate as Audi for 2026. It’s also another sign that Bottas is not in the team’s thinking for racing on in 2025 alongside Nico Hulkenberg, either.

The risk for any driver in changing their race engineer stems from how drastic such calls really are. As Rubens Barrichello’s former race engineer, Rodi Basso, once told me: "In general, the driver doesn't get more than two chances to change the team just to justify underperformance.”

And while we don’t yet know if this is indeed what has happened for Leclerc, his 2024 campaign has been overshadowed by Sainz’s performances in the other SF-24. Yet it was Leclerc who got Ferrari’s backing in their respective winter contract negotiations and so was in position to be retained when Fred Vasseur discovered Lewis Hamilton was available for 2025.

Leclerc insists his early-2024 qualifying tyre preparation weakness has been better since Suzuka. But it was clear early in the Miami GP that although he’d made an impressive recovery from his FP1-costing chicane gaffe, Sainz was sliding much less and so had the better chance of getting after Verstappen. Plus, potentially gaining in circumstances such as those that boosted eventual winner Lando Norris.

Making a positive kick onwards is now very important for Leclerc given Ferrari has shuffled his engineering pieces following a tricky period. But the Imola weekend was already set to be critical for the home team with those sidepod and engine cover upgrades. Ferrari hopes they will boost the performance of its floor – with a clear lap time gain offered in such extra downforce.

McLaren insiders fear the potential for Ferrari to gain so much – assuming everything works as planned from the factory as McLaren deserves credit for achieving in its many major updates since this time last year – it will be back to being Red Bull’s closest rival. This would mirror the form book from the season’s opening rounds.

Incidents such as Verstappen’s Miami chicane off and resulting damage, and how Red Bull clearly didn’t have its usual in-race tyre advantage around the Hard Rock Stadium as earlier in 2024, show cracks are appearing in its entrenched position. 

Ferrari taking time from McLaren therefore would actually boost Red Bull right when it seems additional pressure on the team might just lead to more regular different winners.

Leclerc must now kick on in his quest to return to the top step of the podium, with upgrades added by Ferrari at Imola

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images