Charles Leclerc is not satisfied. You don’t need psychology expertise to recognize it or understand why. He recently described himself and teammate Lewis Hamilton as “passengers” in a car with nothing more to offer, and the last vestiges of any hope of salvaging something from a deeply disappointing season have disappeared.
But for Charles Leclerc, it’s bigger than just 2026. As he turns 28, he can feel the silent ticking of the clock getting a little louder.th My birthday is approaching. In F1 terms, he is now middle-aged and arrived in F1 having never driven a car good enough to compete for a world championship.
There is no doubt that he is capable of doing so. Most drivers on the grid believe they can do it, and no doubt they will all say so, but Leclerc has proven it with consistently outstanding performances in cars that are sometimes good but never great. Not only has he demonstrated incredible ability since his early days in karting, and has continually honed it to the point where he is rightly considered one of F1’s best, but he has also proven that he can compete with F1’s current top dog, Max Verstappen.
Remember the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix, when Ferrari looked like genuine title contenders for a brief period in the first half of the season, when they outmaneuvered Verstappen in the battle for victory in the closing stages of the race? While he wasn’t always on top, the fact that there were flashpoints where the two faced off regularly and he held his own in that meant a title showdown between this pair seemed like it was their destiny for a long time. Leclerc can’t be blamed for tying his wagon to the wrong prancing horse and fearing he’ll never get the chance to challenge Verstappen or anyone else for the title.
Leclerc first joined Ferrari in his second year in F1 in 2019 after a very impressive season in the midfield with Sauber. He saw off his teammate Sebastian Vettel, a four-time world champion, but by then he had fallen as a driver due to his own experiences with poor results, politics and failure at Ferrari, and despite being pushed hard at times, Carlos Sainz was overall the stronger Ferrari driver during their four years together. He has also comprehensively given up Lewis Hamilton so far. That means Ferrari is without a doubt his team, and have been for some time.
The question is whether this is a team that really wants to be in the lead. By most standards, Leclerc won eight races there and finished second in the 2022 World Championship. But these are the statistics of a good Grand Prix driver, and Leclerc is much more than that. The proof is in his qualifying number. Some people unfairly use it as a stick to beat him.. Of his incredible 27 pole positions, only five resulted in victories. Some would argue that this is indicative of a driver who is a qualifying specialist, capable of pulling off great laps at the edge of his limits, but who is limited by race conditions. But that’s not Leclerc. It’s true that he is considered by many to be the fastest lapper in F1 today, and that is backed up by a string of notable pole positions – no one, not even Verstappen, can dance as consistently on the thin edge as he does.
Sometimes this happens, especially on street circuits, as a result of an unusual lap by a car that isn’t the fastest, but more often it’s the result of a car that may have been the fastest in qualifying but didn’t have the race pace to stay in the lead. Although he can dance within the limits of physics, he is still bound by the limits of physics like any other driver, and on race day his car regresses to the mean. Yes, he has had to work on improving aspects of his game such as tire management, but he has done very well and built on a strong job on Sunday.
The jury is still out on whether Leclerc can win the championship against, say, Verstappen in a similar car, but that’s as far as doubts always remain until a driver finds himself in such a situation. He has fulfilled all the conditions so far, is respected by his colleagues and deserves the opportunity to try himself.
Plus, he has to do that as a competitive animal, which is what makes this year so tough. Many times this year he has spoken with regret about Ferrari’s strong run in 2024 and how he had very high expectations following the near-miss in the constructors’ championship that disappeared in the early months of this year. This concern began to emerge in testing, where Ferrari did not look strong, and was confirmed by early struggles, giving way to hopes that upgrades, particularly the rear suspension modifications introduced at Spa in July, would allow at least some positive results to be recovered from 2025.
At the recent Singapore Grand Prix weekend, he admitted that “it’s not easy when you haven’t even seen any progress all year long” and said it “takes a lot of energy” to contain his frustration. A disappointing performance there and a disappointing performance at the last race in Azerbaijan, where he crashed in Q3 and played a big part in his struggles, appear to have taken the remaining wind out of his sails.
Ferrari’s last world title came in 2008 when they won the constructors’ championship with Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa (above), and they have to go back one more year to win the last drivers’ championship courtesy of Raikkonen. Leclerc wants to end Maranello’s losing streak, but is Ferrari running out of time to give him a good enough car to do so? Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Drivers are well aware of how difficult it is to be in a position to challenge for the drivers’ championship in modern F1. Leclerc will look with envy at McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri and will no doubt feel that he is better than them and deserves a car of that quality. He will be asking himself if Ferrari can really deliver such a car, and will no doubt be willing to trade off his desire to remain with his beloved team for a long time with the realization that he cannot leave his career to chance. Ferrari has not won a world championship since the constructors’ championship in record drought in 2008, but Leclerc’s faith in Fred Vasseur’s revolution will be shaken by this year. He only needs to look at Fernando Alonso to warn him of what will happen if he ends up on the wrong team.
While Alonso is certainly a great player and has earned his place among F1 legends, his last victory was an astonishing 12 years ago, and those numbers do him no justice when compared to the statistics amassed by Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and his arch-rival Michael Schumacher. Whether you place the blame on Alonso for poor decision-making, burning bridges or just plain bad luck, it shows how easy it is to retreat from title contention. The fact that Alonso parted ways with Ferrari just before Ferrari returned to winning territory, leading to 2018, and the car that could possibly give him a chance at the championship, is also a warning that if you leave Maranello, you should be very confident in your decision, given the city’s incredible potential.
So where does Leclerc’s thinking stand now? For now, he cannot shape his future until he knows where Ferrari will line up in the 2026 standings. He’ll have an idea where it is, but realistically it’s impossible to be sure and conclusions won’t start to be drawn until the 2026 car, with its brand new power unit and significantly revised chassis rules, takes to the track. Still, the performance profile can be spread across the map, and it can take some time for a clear pattern to emerge.
But he’ll know when 26 years settles on a sample of a small but significant series of events. If things look bad for Ferrari, it could be the basis for the entire rule cycle to be shaken up and Leclerc could be more likely to add fallow years to his age. The exact length of his contract is unknown, but it will run until at least the end of 2028, which would put Leclerc in his early 30s. Ferrari needs to rebuild confidence in Ferrari early in 2026 or they will definitely be obliged to look elsewhere.
At the moment it is impossible to say where he will go. Leclerc could look into the situation in early 2026 to understand which team is the most desirable and where the opportunities lie, but for now we don’t know. Any team in F1 would be interested in him, but the question is how the other chess pieces will be placed. The question will therefore not only be whether he should leave Ferrari, but where he should go.
Leclerc’s dream is to have Ferrari as his home. He has been on a roll since signing with the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2016 and dreams of achieving legendary status as Ferrari World Champion. If he does, it will have a similar impact to Michael Schumacher’s 2000 championship win, ending a 20-year drivers’ championship drought. This year is now the 18th year of a similar dry spell dating back to Kimi Raikkonen’s title in 2007. That alone could mean that Leclerc could become an important figure in Ferrari’s history.
What is clear is that he must make objective and level-headed decisions. F1 careers are short, and if you’re convinced that Ferrari won’t give you a car, you not only need to move towards winning the title, but you also need to avoid staying in an environment where you lack confidence and risk becoming stagnant as a driver. The hope is that he won’t have to take such drastic action and that Ferrari will bounce back next year and make 2025 just a blip. It’s not impossible. Despite widespread expectations that Mercedes has the strongest power unit, this remains unproven, as the 2026 model will be the first car conceived under Loic Serra’s technical leadership.
One thing is for sure: Leclerc will continue to deliver his best performance in a car that was only fourth overall this year, despite still chasing second place in the constructors’ championship. While doing so, he will feel the gentle pressure of time gradually increasing in intensity, almost imperceptibly, as he waits for what he still feels with absolute certainty his destiny to win the world championship.
He hopes Ferrari’s performance will solve the problem, but he must be less confident than ever that it will happen in the future.
