Charles Leclerc is a talent. That’s something you cannot deny of a man who has taken the GP3 and Formula 2 titles back-to-back and is now prising sixth-place finishes out of his Sauber Formula 1 car.
He’s collected legions of fans en route to the top and there is now a lot of expectation on those young shoulders. Speculation suggests that the deal for his 2019 Ferrari drive is all but confirmed and the team is swapping its last world champion in Kimi Raikkonen for a man they hope will deliver even greater success in the future.
Ferrari, as a rule, doesn’t sign young untested drivers. You have to go back to 1977 to find its last recruit with less than two years F1 experience under their belt. Back then it was Gilles Villeneuve for whom the team in red went out on a limb – a risk that paid off.
Whether Leclerc is worth the risk very much depends on what Ferrari want from the driver. In so many ways Kimi Raikkonen fits their needs perfectly. He’s third in the championship and a solid number two who has the ability to back Vettel all the way. Without his two non-finishes of 2018- for which he was to blame for neither- he would be far nearer the tails of Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.
So far, 2018 seems somewhat of a resurgence for the Finn. He might be approaching 39 but his getaway in Austria got him firmly between the warring Mercedes and was not the start of a man who is past it.
He’s world class, but without that irritating trait of being a threat to Vettel who has worked to shape Ferrari in his own image. Raikkonen leaves him with the room to focus on the outside challenge rather than being distracted by internal competition. He’s as experienced, quick and reliable as you can get in a driver resigned to not being tangled up in a championship.
Leclerc on the other hand is an unknown. He’s a risk. He might be inconsistent, a young and relatively inexperienced driver suddenly thrust into the cockpit of a Prancing Horse. Worse, he could disrupt the careful balance of egos within Ferrari.
Even Toto Wolff has come around to the view that intra-team rivalry is disruptive after experiencing the atmosphere at Mercedes during the Rosberg/Hamilton era and at Ferrari the system of number one drivers is all but rule of law.
Invariably, comparisons to Max Verstappen’s own meteoric rise occur. But even Red Bull’s wonder boy hasn’t been immune to the growing pains of a burgeoning F1 career. Even now in his fourth year in the series he is still attracting criticism that his driving style is immature.
The early part of his 2018 has been blighted by spins, collisions and missed opportunities. His shock victory in front of legions of Dutch fans in Austria may have done much to help him put his misfortune behind him but the fact that 2017 and 2018, flashes of brilliance aside, have not been glorious for Max Verstappen.
However, it’s impossible to forget his victory in Spain on his very first outing for the Red Bull senior team – it is much easier to overlook his struggles since.
Leclerc does have much more single-seater experience than Verstappen. He’s only a month younger than the Dutchman but he made his F1 debut three years later. Both the 20-year-olds represent the future of F1 but every great goes through periods of learning and growth. In a Sauber it doesn’t matter if a driver goes through an inconsistent spell but in a Ferrari – well, that’s a different story. It doesn’t take much for the world’s media to get their claws out.
To promote Leclerc so soon only makes sense if Ferrari is sculpting its next world champion but the problem remains that they already have a super talent sitting on the other side of the garage waiting to be crowned champion in red.
Vettel has been working with Ferrari for four years now and while he’s creeping closer to his goal he can’t afford for the team to become distracted by a newer, younger, rising star.
He still has another two years left on his contract and must feel that he has a good chance of securing a championship victory in that time. After nine races this season Vettel holds a one-point advantage over fellow four-time champion Hamilton and in 2017 it was bad luck and mistakes that led to Vettel’s ultimate downfall. The raw speed was there.
Vettel can beat Hamilton; the question is if he will. And if by the end of 2020 he decides that Ferrari is no longer his best bet for success then the team will have to find themselves a new title protagonist. Let’s face it, this is Ferrari, they’ll never struggle to sign top name drivers. To an extent, they don’t need to nurture their own talents up the ladder when it’s every little karter’s dream to drive for the Prancing Horse.
Rather, Ferrari is terrified that if it doesn’t promote Leclerc he will swiftly be poached by another team. It’s a legitimate fear. But is it worth the possible disruption to the team?
Swapping a known (and a successful known at that) for an unknown is always a risk. Leclerc might blossom into Ferrari’s first world champion in 10 years or he might flounder under the immense pressure of such a seat. It’s easy to get ensnared in the excitement of a rising star but sometimes hysteria is counterproductive.
At the end of the day this is all just speculation. It appears that Ferrari has indeed signed Leclerc on a two-year contract and that that was the plan all along if he impressed in his debut year. But one thing is for certain- if Leclerc can do in F1 what he did in F2 then motorsport won’t know what hit it.
