Charles Leclerc learned earlier than most drivers who his 2025 team mate was going to be, when Ferrari announced it was parting ways with Carlos Sainz Jnr at the end of the season to bring in Lewis Hamilton to Maranello.
Leclerc is no stranger to multiple world championship winning team mates, of course, having raced alongside Sebastian Vettel for two seasons and having outperformed him overall.
But while so much attention will be on his incoming team mate for next year, Leclerc has shown over the first half of 2024 why he should not fear being overshadowed by Hamilton when the seven-times champion joins his team.
Although Ferrari’s performance up to this stage of the season has not been at the high level either he or his team would have hoped for, Leclerc has tried his best throughout the season to extract every tenth of performance he could find from the SF24. But while he has often delivered all that Ferrari has asked of him, he has had to deal with frustrations a little too often so far this season.
The opening round in Bahrain was one such example, where he had to contend with a braking problem throughout the race which caused him to run off track several times with little he could do to predict how much braking force he would get when he pushed his left foot. Despite that, he still managed to pass George Russell to finish a very solid fourth behind his team mate. He looked near certain to take pole in Australia, but only managed fifth after changing his set-up ahead of qualifying did not pay off for him.
Leclerc’s weekend in Canada was like a living nightmare. He was knocked out in Q2 after Ferrari decided to use a single set of softs in a strategy call that did not work out, then he was left floundering at the back of the field on slick tyres on a damp track in the race after the team pulled a ‘hail mary’ play to try and gain some ground in the changeable conditions. A clash with Oscar Piastri at the first corner in the Austrian Grand Prix compromised his afternoon, then his British Grand Prix was another where a gamble on intermediate tyres proved to be completely the wrong call, leaving him well out of contention.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
But although fortune did not seem to be smiling on him, Leclerc still put together some very strong weekends. He finished ‘best of the rest’ in third behind the two Red Bulls in Jeddah, then took another podium finish in Miami after qualifying on the front row of the grid – achieving the best result he could have expected both times. He also recovered from a heavy crash in practice at Hungary to move up from sixth on the grid to finish in fourth, beating Sainz who had started ahead of him.
Charles Leclerc
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 1 (x2) | 11 (x2) |
| GP finish | 1 | 14 |
| Points | 177 | |
The clear highlight, however, was Monaco. After years of horrible luck in his home grand prix, Leclerc stormed to another pole position around the Principality to put himself in the best position possible to win. Although the race itself was perhaps the easiest that Leclerc will ever have after an opening lap red flag meant he could run the final 77 laps without any pit stops, Leclerc had earned his win on Saturday – like most Monaco winners do.
His Belgian Grand Prix weekend was very strong and arguably his best three days of the season so far. At Spa, Ferrari were clearly not the fastest team out of the four at the front, yet Leclerc still managed to secure second place in qualifying to inherit pole from Max Verstappen, who had a grid penalty. Although he lost the lead of the race early to Hamilton, he showed excellent race pace and held off Verstappen over the closing laps to finish fourth on the road, only to be promoted onto the podium after the race.
Although he went into the summer break having scored just a single point less than his team mate over the 13 rounds they had both competed in together, Leclerc was the better performing driver by almost every other metric. Leclerc had out-qualified Sainz more often, finished ahead more often and had spent over 100 more laps ahead of Sainz during grands prix. So far this season, Leclerc is demonstrating his qualities that have led Ferrari to invest so much into him. He will likely have every confidence that he can go toe-to-toe with Hamilton in 2025.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Formula 1
Browse all Formula 1 articles
