Charles Leclerc’s faith in Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur runs so deep he calls it “200 per cent”. In a sport built on tenths and scepticism, that kind of conviction is rare. It is also, he says, a “big reason” why he chose to tie his future to Maranello for the “coming seasons”, even as his own 2026 campaign lurched through one of the roughest patches of his Ferrari career.
The timing raised eyebrows. While Lewis Hamilton was racking up podiums and a first win in red, Leclerc was stumbling through Monaco, Barcelona and Austria with two DNFs and a lonely P8. Yet in his mind, there was no hesitation.
“It just felt right,” he said on F1’s official podcast, Beyond The Grid. “For me, this is where I belong, for now. This is where I feel good. This is where I am the most motivated to do well, just because I love this team so much.”
Leclerc has been part of the Ferrari family for most of his professional life, first through the academy and then as a race driver from 2019. That history weighs heavily on his ambitions.
“I don't want to give up on my ultimate goal, which is to become a World Champion with Ferrari,” he said. “I believe in the project, I believe in every single person of the team. I think we are in a year where we've been showing innovation. We are very aggressive also in the production plan and in the upgrades we are bringing. That gives me lots of hopes for the future.”
Vasseur, trust and a bond “stronger than business”
The project, for Leclerc, now has a clear face: Fred Vasseur. The Frenchman managed him in junior categories, believed in him early, and now runs the team he calls home. That continuity matters.
“Fred is a big reason why I have signed again as well,” Leclerc admitted. “I believe in Fred 200 percent. We've known each other for many years now and to be able to work with him in the team I've always loved is a privilege.”
The connection, he says, goes beyond the usual driver-team principal dynamic.
“It feels like I know Fred since forever. He's the kind of person that you speak once and, I don't know, I think it's the values. There's just something that was naturally working from the beginning and you cannot quite explain that.
“But from the very first talks, it felt like I've known him forever. So, obviously, the bond is stronger than just a work, business relationship.”
That bond proved crucial when the results stopped matching the rhetoric earlier this year.
Hamilton flying, Leclerc searching
While Hamilton settled into life at Ferrari with the assurance of a seven-time World Champion, Leclerc found himself wrestling with a car that refused to bend to his will.
Hamilton picked up P2 finishes in Canada and Monaco, then delivered his first Ferrari victory in Barcelona. Leclerc, by contrast, hit the canvas twice with retirements and salvaged just eighth in Monaco, his home race and usually his emotional barometer.
In those moments, the temptation is obvious: copy the fast guy.
“It's not as easy as, ‘Oh, Lewis is doing that. I'll just do the same,’” Leclerc said. “Lewis is an incredibly talented driver and has a natural driving style that is his and he's the best in the world for that particular driving style.
“To reproduce that is very tricky.”
So he went another way. Rather than forcing himself into Hamilton’s template, Leclerc pushed Ferrari to bend the car back towards him.
“I tried to push more into trying to find ways to have this car a bit more fitted to my driving style. I found a few things in the data that was just not working. Again, in Formula 1, it's not always black and white.
“It's not like you sit in front of your computer, look at the data and say, ‘Oh, this is one tenth and a half of a second. Let's change that.’ It's not as easy as that. It's intuition. It's feeling. It's things that you might think, ‘Okay, this is what makes me a bit less comfortable in the car. And if I improve that feeling, then performance will come.’”
Silverstone shift and the battle against overthinking
The breakthrough came at Silverstone. Ferrari tweaked the car, Leclerc adjusted with it, and the result was a win that felt more like a reset than a one-off.
After those changes, he felt things finally moved “in the right direction”. The key, he insists, is mental as much as mechanical.
“The car is constantly changing so it's not like I can really go back to that feeling I had in Melbourne, so it's evolving but my goal is to get into the car and not overthink,” he said.
“When you overthink, you know that you are losing time on the table because our sport is not a lot about reacting on what's happening on the car. It's more about anticipating and feeling the car. Getting into a corner, I need to know exactly the way the car will behave so I don't have to overthink about things.
“I think overthinking is killing performance. When things come naturally, that's where I think the flow state that we speak about, racing drivers or athletes as well, the flow state when things just flow naturally is really where you use 100 per cent of your potential. When you've got to overthink things, that’s where it becomes trickier.”
In other words, the driver who has built his reputation on precision and qualifying brilliance is now fighting to protect the instinct that made him fast in the first place.
Chasing Mercedes, one upgrade at a time
For all the personal battles, the bigger picture is blunt. Ferrari sit second in the Constructors’ standings, 87 points behind Mercedes. The gap is significant, but in this rules era, not unbridgeable.
Leclerc, though, refuses to waste energy on title permutations.
“It’s not something I really want to put energy towards thinking about too much,” he said. “This championship will be won with upgrades. The upgrades are so powerful with these cars.
“We've got a lot less downforce than we used to in the past, so every point of downforce you add to this car has got a much bigger influence on how the car feels like on track. So the pecking order can change so quickly one way or another.”
His approach is stripped back.
“I'm very much focused race by race and not really thinking about the long-term picture about if we've got a real shot with that championship. But surely until it's not finished, I'll keep believing in it and we'll see how it goes.”
Belief, again. In Vasseur, in the factory, in the red car that still defines his career.
“The championship is something that I will dream of ticking off one day, particularly with the red team, this has been a dream of mine since many years. I feel we are getting closer. When will that be? I don’t know, I hope as early as it can be.”
Ferrari have given him a contract and a project. Vasseur has given him clarity. The rest will be decided in the only place that really counts: on Sundays, with the weight of the red overalls, and a title dream he refuses to let go.
