Why Leclerc remains committed to his Ferrari F1 title dream

The 2023 Formula 1 season feels very familiar to Charles Leclerc. The Ferrari driver started the year expecting huge, glittering things after taking major steps towards his world championship ambition the year before – a season where the team’s frailties and his own errors proved costly. But, despite a pre-season of positive speculation about his and Ferrari’s chances, testing revealed them to be rather dashed. For 2023, read 2020.  

That year, Ferrari’s challenger was designed to make up for its predecessor’s low-speed-corner weaknesses. But the controversial FIA engine settlement meant Ferrari’s power unit was unexpectedly down on top-end punch. It would be two years before the team’s engine grunt was challenging Honda and Mercedes again, by which time F1’s chassis rules had moved on to something else entirely and the team was suddenly back in play for victory. 

“The motivation was extremely high,” Leclerc says of his 2023 pre-season expectations. “And obviously, there was the momentum of last season where we finished second in the drivers’ championship, second in the constructors’ championship – you’ve got one target from that moment onwards. Do a step forward. Become a world champion this year – both drivers’ and constructors’. 

“Then you get to the first race and you understand that it might be a lot more difficult than that.” 

It was clear in pre-season testing in Bahrain that Ferrari suspected it was in trouble for 2023. The team had worked to improve aero efficiency in the SF-23 after the Red Bull drivers had regularly come past with ease on the straights last year, but the suggestion was that this had come at a cost to corner speed. Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz moved to downplay expectations. Come the first race weekend, Leclerc challenged Max Verstappen for pole – his one-lap strengths on full display once again – but ended up only third on the grid.  

The race revealed the sheer scale of the task facing Ferrari and the rest against Red Bull, as Verstappen waltzed off into the distance, while inferior tyre-degradation levels cost Leclerc against the slow-starting Sergio Perez. Then came the engine electrics failure in Jeddah that also led to a grid penalty. The campaign’s story was already established: Ferrari was once again building back, just as it had been after Leclerc’s breakthrough season in red in 2019. 

A dispiriting Bahrain watching Verstappen disappear into the distance, then losing out to Perez before mechanical failure intervened, set the tone for a tough season for Leclerc

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Leclerc himself makes the 2020 comparison. And that was another year when he appeared to react to the challenge of a poor car in his own thrillingly wild style – but overdoing it at times and ending up in more than one shunt. In 2023, this started with his Melbourne clash with Lance Stroll and early retirement, followed by his Baku (sprint) and Miami qualifying crashes. In Baku, he at least brilliantly nailed a pair of poles at a track where he has always gone very well. 

“You need to accept it,” explained Leclerc, speaking to Motorsport.com F1 editor Jonathan Noble back in the summer, of how a top F1 team works onwards from the disappointment of discovering it isn’t racing where it had hoped to be. “We all went through it with the whole team in 2020, where the results weren’t as good as what we were expecting at the beginning of the season. And it’s difficult. 

“It very often doesn’t come from only one thing, it’s multiple things that made a small difference in the wrong direction. And you need to pinpoint those things and work on them only and not put everything in question.  

“But I believe we have done a good job this time. In 2020, I felt like it was a bit more difficult to find this path again. But straight away this year, I felt like we were on it and working in the right direction. Then [the other teams are] really close and [have] done steps forward. So, it’s not easy.” 

Leclerc explains that this season has mainly been about identifying the "two/three things that we had to work on in order to improve – mostly race pace"

Indeed, Ferrari’s 2023 campaign has been complicated by, at times, Aston Martin, Mercedes and now McLaren supplanting it as Red Bull’s closest challenger. The turbulent change behind the leading team means those squads have ended up taking points off each other, with Mercedes currently leading the battle for the distant second place in the constructors’ championship by 28 points over Ferrari. Aston Martin is just 68 points further back with five rounds remaining. 

But several of Ferrari’s weaknesses in 2023 are similar to those that ended up being so costly for Leclerc in 2022. He notes the “strange” imbalance of the SF-23 being “really quick [in qualifying, then] we arrive in a race and we struggle a lot”. Red Bull’s RB19 has a similar imbalance, but its strengths on long-stint tyre life are rewarded at the important time: when points are on offer. The issue that has really hurt Leclerc this time is that the reworked Ferrari package, initially set up to run on the edge of control in terms of the oversteer he prefers, has contributed to his many wild moments.

PLUS: What 100 races have taught F1 about Russell, Norris and Leclerc

In the cost cap era, Ferrari and co cannot just try to spend their way out of trouble with aggressive car development. Ferrari initially suggested it would not change the car concept that the early races of 2023 had revealed was still inferior to Red Bull’s own class-leading approach and was indeed harder to drive, before it finally switched to the much-vaunted downwash sidepod development path at June’s Spanish Grand Prix. But, like with Mercedes’ similar story, there remains more development potential in the critical floor and suspension areas that will theoretically take a winter reset to put right in Ferrari’s 2024 machine. 

Spa proved an exception to Ferrari's recent trend of finding race performances disappointing relative to qualifying pace

Photo by: Erik Junius

Leclerc explains that this season has therefore mainly been about identifying the “two/three things that we had to work on in order to improve – mostly race pace”.

“Now it’s very clear what is the direction we need to take,” he adds. “It’s taking time because in F1 it’s not from one day to the other that you can improve. But we’ve done some steps forward. We need to do some others because the road is still long to catch Red Bull back.” 

Ferrari knows its car works well enough in qualifying – even if Verstappen so far leads Leclerc, Sainz and Perez by 10 poles to their respective doubles. But all through the season’s early rounds, it was clear that, like 2022’s F1-75, the SF-23 was chewing through its rubber to a far greater extent than its rivals. But things got better from Spain in early June, with Ferrari insiders suggesting that the efforts the team made on setting up its reworked design for the main event at F1’s laboratory track and a subsequent Pirelli tyre test there were key to its upturn in form. 

Further floor and front-wing changes followed in Austria, where Leclerc was back to bothering Verstappen in GP qualifying and scored his second podium of the season after his third place in Baku. He even led the main event at Red Bull’s track – albeit thanks to the handy timing of a virtual safety car period. Strategy and pitstop challenges at Silverstone and the Hungaroring came next, but then Ferrari headed into the summer break on something of a surprise high, again delivered by Leclerc. 

This was his race pace in the Belgian GP. There he’d been artificially boosted to his 20th F1 career pole by Verstappen’s gearbox-change grid penalty and was never expected to keep Perez or the recovering Dutchman behind for long. Mercedes was also confident that Lewis Hamilton would be passing the polesitter, but Leclerc not only saw off the seven-time world champion’s early attentions, but he then pulled away. 

As it has worked on its car weaknesses, Leclerc says Ferrari has been boosted this year by team boss Fred Vasseur’s policy of creating “a bubble” to avoid “being too much influenced on what’s happening outside” since he joined from Alfa Romeo/Sauber in January. 

For Vasseur, this has meant fronting up to Ferrari’s issues more directly than his predecessor Mattia Binotto did, creating more of a shield for Leclerc and Sainz while at the same time opening up in the media. This hasn’t meant a massive communication revolution, but the feeling inside Ferrari is that it has faced less criticism than it did when its 2022 championship challenge imploded. 

A spirit of openness brought by Vasseur has helped create more of a shield for the drivers

Photo by: Ferrari

But there is no better way to change a narrative than by improving results, and Ferrari felt that its progress in that critical race tyre management sphere continued at Zandvoort after the summer break. There, Sainz felt he delivered “one of [his] best drives of the season”.

PLUS: Why Leclerc getting biggest Dutch GP call right is important for Ferrari's F1 future

Then on home turf at the Italian GP, Ferrari produced a Monza-specific car package, with slender rear wings combining with fresh engine grunt. The result was a sensational Sainz pole and early battle with Verstappen at the head of the pack before the Spaniard and Leclerc engaged in a thrilling scrap for the final podium spot behind the recovering Perez. And, of course, Sainz went even better at Singapore, winning from pole on the one off-colour weekend Red Bull has produced so far in 2023.

But, even though the SF-23 will now go down as an F1 winner, Leclerc reckons that the work Ferrari will put into it until the close of this season won’t be enough to topple Red Bull for good. As Verstappen’s Suzuka domination rather proved…

“For 2024, there are no doubts in everybody’s mind, the target is to be back on top and fighting Red Bull,” Leclerc states. “I believe realistically, and this is only my opinion, that before the end of the year, we won’t be able to catch Red Bull. But the target will be at least to be in front of McLaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin.” 

"I love Ferrari. It feels like home to me. My first target and my first dream is to become a world champion with Ferrari – more than anything else" Charles Leclerc

It’s not just the overall Ferrari story that needs addressing. Leclerc is currently not only behind Sainz in many observers’ considerations of 2023, but also sits one place and eight points behind him in the drivers’ standings. Sainz also shone brightest on Ferrari’s biggest chances so far at Monza and in Singapore.

In addition to Leclerc’s early season crashes – and his contact-filled Zandvoort weekend – he surprisingly struggled in the mixed conditions that hit many of the mid-season rounds, while his team-mate did not. On this, Leclerc felt that he was being too aggressive for what the tyres require in such circumstances. This was behind his poor qualifying results for the Austria sprint and in Montreal.  

PLUS: The F1 reality obscured by Leclerc's public Montreal frustrations

Leclerc has also recently opened up about how those post-Spain tweaks on set-up choices to improve tyre management and make the SF-23 more predictable at flying-lap speed have added understeer he doesn’t like and struggles to drive around. With all that in mind, working back to regularly being Ferrari’s leading driver should now be a top target, as well as having a smooth end to the campaign to build momentum for 2024 as he nears 100 GP starts for the team. 

He took a big step on both these fronts last month in Japan, leading Sainz in qualifying and the race at Suzuka. That remains one of F1’s top tests of driver skills, since its demanding layout exposes cornering commitment, and its abrasive surface means careful tyre management is required in the race. Although Sainz was very good in these areas, Leclerc was better.  

Sainz shone brightest when Ferrari had its best chances to win at Monza and in Singapore, where Leclerc played the team game

Photo by: Ferrari

It’s also worth recalling Leclerc’s role in Sainz’s Singapore win, where he pushed to start on soft tyres in a successful bid to jump Mercedes driver George Russell, even though Leclerc knew that would force him into a rear-gunner role. He subsequently followed Ferrari’s instructions early in the action-packed Marina Bay race, but was then undone having to wait for other cars to pass in the critical safety car pitstop period. Climbing engine temperatures then dropped him from the lead fight that Sainz would coolly and cleverly go on to win. 

PLUS: Why Sainz’s Singapore F1 success was not just about DRS genius

But that loyal approach should, in theory, also serve Leclerc well in what is now set to be a critical time for his Ferrari and overall F1 future. With the 2024 campaign now essentially in sight, the just-turned-26-year-old will then be entering the final year of the five-season contract extension he sealed at the end of his first campaign in red back in 2019.

In the early summer, Leclerc revealed that he and Ferrari were “starting slowly to speak about” a new deal to keep him in place beyond 2024, but in reality this amounted to little more than jokes within the Maranello camp. Rumours through the summer break that he’d signed a new five-year contract worth £150million turned out to be false, leading Leclerc to joke: “I wish I did this deal because it looks like a good deal!”

Instead, the Monegasque is set to sit down with Vasseur come the season’s end and try to find a new arrangement at the same time as Sainz, who is also out of contract from the end of 2024. Leclerc acknowledges that “every driver has considered their different options, once they get the option”, regarding a potential shock move to another squad. This follows complimentary talk of his abilities from Mercedes boss Toto Wolff early in 2023, while Hamilton’s (now concluded) contract extension discussion continued, and an apparent sounding out on his availability from Aston Martin Group CEO Martin Whitmarsh. 

The reality is, however, that the driver market is currently a closed shop at F1’s other top squads. So, unless Leclerc is willing to risk letting his Ferrari contract run down and the team potentially going elsewhere for 2025 while he hopes for a surprise gap to appear, doing a shorter new deal makes logical sense. So too, from a career security perspective if nothing else, would inking another long-term Ferrari contract.

After all, Leclerc is adamant that, if he and the team can get things together, then winning a first world title with the squad that carried him through the single-seater ranks is still his ultimate aim.

“I always loved Ferrari,” he says. “It’s always been my dream being here. And it’s my dream still now. It is clear, I think for everybody within the team, that we are not happy with the situation we are in today – in that we want to win. But I love Ferrari. It feels like home to me.  

“My first target and my first dream is to become a world champion with Ferrari – more than anything else. So, if there’s a slight opportunity for it to happen, I will have no doubt about pushing to stay here.”

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Leclerc is popular with Ferrari's loyal fanbase and remains committed to achieving success in red