Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, this Friday in Austria. LEONHARD FOEGER (Portal)
Charles Leclerc is the total package. His evident skill as a driver is combined with a calm character and image that combines purity and sensitivity with the necessary touch of bad temper to establish himself on the grid of the Formula 1 World Championship, which many pass with little pain or glory as fast as the cars they drive. Despite all these qualities, it has not escaped anyone that the Monegasque is going through a difficult period at the professional level, a period that has been dragging on for the last year.
Ferrari then launched its best car in more than a decade, the fastest prototype early on in the course, but not enough to make up for strategy-level errors made at key moments of the season. This lack of penetrating power spurred Red Bull and Max Verstappen on to win in the end. With three wins, Leclerc, who was supposed to lead the Scuderia, could not resist the Dutchman’s appeal, a circumstance that foreshadowed a new revolution in Maranello’s structure, which explains the mismanagement in which the company is involved. Il Cavallino executives killed Mattia Binotto, the director who, due to his technical profile, played a key role in the concept of the F1-75 that achieved four victories in 2022; one from Sainz (UK) and three from Leclerc (Bahrain, Australia and Austria).
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This weekend the paddock is taking place at the Red Bull Ring, right where Leclerc last stood on the top step of the podium. There the Ferrari man pierced the seemingly impenetrable armor of Verstappen, whom he always overtook up to three times on the track in the race. The Italian team’s drive through Spielberg would have been even smoother if Sainz’s car’s engine hadn’t caught fire three quarters into the test. This time the panorama is very different for the red car brand and also for Leclerc, at least if we look at their numbers, although that doesn’t seem to be a sufficient argument for Ferrari to question him.
Ahead of the ninth stop on the calendar, Sainz sits fifth in the overall standings with 68 points, 14 points more than his partner, who is seventh, despite being the only one of the two to move up from the drawer (he finished third in Baku) . He only managed six points in the first three races (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia) after retiring due to a glitch on the start and going off track in Melbourne, tying him in the record. The back-to-back accidents in Miami exacerbated a crisis that was even more pronounced in Monaco due to a misunderstanding with his team that led to him being penalized for obstructing Lando Norris. Confusion reached its limit the following weekend in Montmeló after Leclerc failed to explain how he could have been eliminated in the first qualifying round (Q1). Despite all this, Austria’s Leclerc admits he has already started talks with Ferrari about extending his contract, which expires at the end of 2024.
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too irregular
“Little by little, we’re starting to talk about it, half jokingly, half seriously,” said the 2016 GP3 Champion and 2017 Formula 2 Champion, who made his World Cup debut with Sauber in 2018 before entering a Triple flipped somersault, to Ferrari, in 2019. At the Italian team’s offices, anxious to close the continuity of the current world runner-up, that onslaught doesn’t seem like the same onslaught that dominates the other side of the workshop, where Sainz He has given himself until the end of the year to sign his new contract with a view to 2025.
In his sixth year in Formula One and with the pedigree he assumed, Leclerc was too unpredictable, which does not escape the scrutiny of those who can speak uncompromisingly. According to his own words, these mistakes are to be interpreted as something “normal”, since he is only concerned with “finding the limits”. For Jenson Button, former world champion (2009) and now commentator, this is the sticking point. “He’s just as fast as the others and maybe even the fastest of them all in terms of pace. His problem is that he doesn’t recognize where the limit is,” says the Briton.
This Sunday (3pm, Dazn) Leclerc has a golden opportunity to justify himself as he will start second from the front row, alongside Verstappen, who took his sixth pole of the course and 26th of his service record, one Number on par with Mika Häkkinen, a two-time champion like him. Sainz starts third and Fernando Alonso seventh.
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