Charles Leclerc: Ferrari’s unassuming F1 star shaped by tragedy

Charles Leclerc considers himself a “real Monegasque”; not the sort that arrives in Monaco with a bulging bank account and a significantly lower tax bill but the natives who were born and schooled there. His parents, Hervé and Pascale, were not poor but he did not grow up accustomed to the flash Monte Carlo lifestyle many might imagine. He is proud of his beginnings, and jokes that the typical Monegasque is “like the French, but maybe more polite”.

Leclerc is certainly that. The laid back Ferrari driver and current leader of the F1 world championship gets on with everybody and has only love for his rivals – “I have no enemies in the paddock,” he says. His name, which sounds like a sweet delicacy in French, is regularly botched by the English-speaking world with a hard “z” on the end of Charles and a firm “erk” at the end of Leclerc, but he never corrects the mispronunciation. “I like both,” he says with a smile.

The unassuming 24-year-old was immersed in motor sport from a young age. Hervé was a Formula 3 driver in the 1980s and 1990s, and later he would take Charles and his two siblings (older brother Lorenzo and younger brother Arthur, now a Formula 3 driver himself) to a local karting track owned by his best friend and fellow racer Philippe Bianchi.

The Leclercs and the Bianchis were close and Philippe’s son, Jules, was Charles’s godfather. When Jules first became an F1 driver in 2013 the families celebrated together, and then again when he won his first ever world championship points the following year, in Monaco of all places. So when Jules was involved in an horrific crash at the Japanese Grand Prix later in that 2014 season, Charles and the whole Leclerc family were devastated. Jules spent nine months in hospital, first in Japan before he was transferred to Nice, where he died in July 2015.

Charles and Jules were not dissimilar in temperament and appearance, and it has not been uncommon down the years for the Ferrari driver to be called his godfather’s name by mistake. “Any time someone calls me Jules it gives me a smile on my face,” Leclerc says. “He was a great person, we were very close. Anytime someone remembers him it makes me smile because he needs to be remembered in this sport.”

At the time of Bianchi’s death, Leclerc was a teenager with a growing reputation. He had won a stack of karting trophies and that year finished fourth in the F3 European Championship (current F1 drivers Lance Stroll, George Russell and Alex Albon finished fifth, sixth and seventh). The following year he pipped Albon to the GP3 title and then he won the Formula 2 world championship, securing him a dream move to Formula One.

It was his greatest achievement so far but it came in the hardest year of his life. Days before the fourth race of the F2 season, Hervé died aged 54 after a long illness. “It was a very, very difficult weekend, I didn’t really have my head into racing,” Charles remembers. “But then I put myself alone after the practice, and asked myself what he wanted me to do in this moment, and the answer came pretty quickly: he wanted me to win, I’m pretty sure.” Charles did win, and celebrated emotionally with his team. “It was the perfect weekend to honour him, the way he deserved for everything he had done.”

The legacy of Hervé Leclerc and Jules Bianchi is the prodigious racer they helped mould. Leclerc consistently proved himself as he rose up the ranks so that by the time he arrived in F1, there was already great anticipation about his career before it had really begun.

During his debut season he showed off his skills in a sub-par Sauber, collecting 39 points to finish 13th in the drivers’ championship (by comparison, his teammate Marcus Ericsson finished 17th with only nine points), and it was enough to earn an immediate call-up to Ferrari, a team who rarely put their faith in youth. There he wasted no time taking on his illustrious teammate, the four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, and over the course of the next two years the youngster proved himself the faster driver, until Vettel’s departure from Ferrari at the end of 2020.

Last season was one of frustration for Ferrari, almost always off the pace of Red Bull and Mercedes, but it may have proved a blessing in disguise: while the top two were fighting tooth and nail for the world championship, Ferrari dedicated time and resources to build their 2022 car ahead of sweeping changes to F1’s regulations.

The gamble worked and the Scuderia have fired out of the blocks this year, winning the first race in Bahrain and taking a thrilling second in Saudi Arabia. Leclerc leads the championship with an apparent edge in speed over teammate Carlos Sainz, and although it is early days he has a genuine chance of becoming the new world champion in Abu Dhabi in November.

His biggest threat is the reigning champion, Max Verstappen, and the pair could not be more different. Verstappen has a typical champion’s temperament not dissimilar to Michael Schumacher – genial off the track but utterly single-minded and coldly uncompromising on it. By contrast Leclerc is unusually laidback: after the thrills of Saudi Arabia, far from fuming to have lost the race, his immediate reaction was to revel in the joy of the fight. “Every race should be like that!” he grinned.

The young duo have history having raced against one another many times as young karters. There is a joyous clip of the pair disputing the facts of a heated junior race 10 years ago, which captures their opposing spirits. “It’s just unfair, Verstappen complains. “I’m leading, he wants to pass, he pushes me, I push him back, and after he pushed me off the track. It’s not fair.”

What did Leclerc think? “Nothing, just an incident on the race.”

After their race in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, Leclerc was pictured chatting with Verstappen in a way that simply didn’t happen during the Dutchman’s title battle with Lewis Hamilton last season. Leclerc has brought fresh energy to the front of the grid, with a persona that is reflected in his smooth driving style, and a steadiness that will be required through a long and taxing season as expectation grows.

Leclerc’s mental state will be tested by the stresses and strains of chasing motorsport’s greatest prize. But then this is a driver with deep wells of mental resolve and resilience, and more than a little inspiration. “I am doing all of this for me, because it’s the way I like living, I love my job, I love doing what I’m doing. But I also have my father and Jules that have helped me massively to get there and I will give absolutely everything to make them proud from up there and to thank them in the best way possible for all the things they have helped me.”