Charles Leclerc learned earlier than most drivers who his 2025 team mate was going to be, when Ferrari announced it was parting ways with Carlos Sainz Jnr at the end of the season to bring in Lewis Hamilton to Maranello.
Leclerc is no stranger to multiple world championship winning team mates, of course, having raced alongside Sebastian Vettel for two seasons and having outperformed him overall.But while so much attention will be on his incoming team mate for next year, Leclerc has shown over the first half of 2024 why he should not fear being overshadowed by Hamilton when the seven-times champion joins his team.
Although Ferrari’s performance up to this stage of the season has not been at the high level either he or his team would have hoped for, Leclerc has tried his best throughout the season to extract every tenth of performance he could find from the SF24. But while he has often delivered all that Ferrari has asked of him, he has had to deal with frustrations a little too often so far this season.
The opening round in Bahrain was one such example, where he had to contend with a braking problem throughout the race which caused him to run off track several times with little he could do to predict how much braking force he would get when he pushed his left foot. Despite that, he still managed to pass George Russell to finish a very solid fourth behind his team mate. He looked near certain to take pole in Australia, but only managed fifth after changing his set-up ahead of qualifying did not pay off for him.
Leclerc’s weekend in Canada was like a living nightmare. He was knocked out in Q2 after Ferrari decided to use a single set of softs in a strategy call that did not work out, then he was left floundering at the back of the field on slick tyres on a damp track in the race after the team pulled a ‘hail mary’ play to try and gain some ground in the changeable conditions. A clash with Oscar Piastri at the first corner in the Austrian Grand Prix compromised his afternoon, then his British Grand Prix was another where a gamble on intermediate tyres proved to be completely the wrong call, leaving him well out of contention.
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But although fortune did not seem to be smiling on him, Leclerc still put together some very strong weekends. He finished ‘best of the rest’ in third behind the two Red Bulls in Jeddah, then took another podium finish in Miami after qualifying on the front row of the grid – achieving the best result he could have expected both times. He also recovered from a heavy crash in practice at Hungary to move up from sixth on the grid to finish in fourth, beating Sainz who had started ahead of him.
Charles Leclerc
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 1 (x2) | 11 (x2) |
| GP finish | 1 | 14 |
| Points | 177 | |
The clear highlight, however, was Monaco. After years of horrible luck in his home grand prix, Leclerc stormed to another pole position around the Principality to put himself in the best position possible to win. Although the race itself was perhaps the easiest that Leclerc will ever have after an opening lap red flag meant he could run the final 77 laps without any pit stops, Leclerc had earned his win on Saturday – like most Monaco winners do.
His Belgian Grand Prix weekend was very strong and arguably his best three days of the season so far. At Spa, Ferrari were clearly not the fastest team out of the four at the front, yet Leclerc still managed to secure second place in qualifying to inherit pole from Max Verstappen, who had a grid penalty. Although he lost the lead of the race early to Hamilton, he showed excellent race pace and held off Verstappen over the closing laps to finish fourth on the road, only to be promoted onto the podium after the race.
Although he went into the summer break having scored just a single point less than his team mate over the 13 rounds they had both competed in together, Leclerc was the better performing driver by almost every other metric. Leclerc had out-qualified Sainz more often, finished ahead more often and had spent over 100 more laps ahead of Sainz during grands prix. So far this season, Leclerc is demonstrating his qualities that have led Ferrari to invest so much into him. He will likely have every confidence that he can go toe-to-toe with Hamilton in 2025.
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Formula 1
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- Verstappen masters race track and rule book with satisfying Qatar victory
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- Hamilton accepts blame for pair of penalties as he fails to score in Losail
bosyber (@bosyber)
14th August 2024, 18:51
I don’t know, some of his misfortune seemed to at least be partly up to him, so if the Ferrari is up there next year I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see him outqualify Hamilton, only to then lose out in the race, rather consistently.
Riccard
14th August 2024, 19:01
I could also see him being faster than Hamilton in Q2, then making a mistake in Q3 – as he has done a couple of times with Sainz this year.
Robert
17th August 2024, 0:02
Yes, exactly. I have not seen his consistency progress in a way you’d expect, especially compared to any champion-material driver. Hes not a rookie anymore, but still behaves like one in many respects.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
14th August 2024, 18:51
I certainly don’t think Leclerc has had a bad season, but it feels a bit odd to have him in the top 5 this season.
notagrumpyfan
14th August 2024, 19:23
Same here, but none of the previously ranked drivers deserve to be ahead of him when taking all races so far into account.
Nick T.
14th August 2024, 22:07
No one in F1 has had an exceptional season besides Max the who hasn’t had a weekend where he hasn’t gotten as close to 100% out of his car. Been a pretty disappointing season across the grid. However, it’s also been a symptom of how up and down most teams’ competitiveness has been aside from McLaren.
Biggsy
14th August 2024, 18:59
I don’t think he deserves to be ranked that much higher than Sainz. If we are looking at the whole first half of the season, and not just the last few races, they’ve been pretty evenly matched. Especially when you take into account that Leclers has a peace of mind, knowing he is staying with the team, while Sainz is not only leaving, but was forced to deal with uncertainty over his future for much of the season.
notagrumpyfan
14th August 2024, 19:27
There’s only one driver ranked between; not that much of a difference. I guess only Norris and Piastri will have a similar small gap between them.
Sergey Martyn
14th August 2024, 19:01
What? Leclerc higher than Sainz? Wake up.
MichaelN
14th August 2024, 19:12
Sainz is consistently underrated. As mentioned, he has the second best finishing position in the races.
Leclerc is a good guy, but he seems to have hit his ceiling. He doesn’t look anymore impressive than he did five years ago. And then there’s Sainz being basically his equal – or near enough – for three out of the last four years. That can’t be what Ferrari wants from their lead driver.
He’ll be hoping he is up against early-season-Hamilton, not current-form-Hamilton next year.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
14th August 2024, 20:10
Indeed, I really like leclerc as a driver, and he impressed me at sauber and his first season at ferrari, as well as a few races in 2022, but I disagree with this article, especially when they said this: “Leclerc had out-qualified Sainz more often, finished ahead more often and had spent over 100 more laps ahead of Sainz during grands prix. So far this season, Leclerc is demonstrating his qualities that have led Ferrari to invest so much into him. He will likely have every confidence that he can go toe-to-toe with Hamilton in 2025.”
I don’t think such stats against a driver who is a bit below the top driver threshold are any impressive.
Again he could be like hamilton a driver who only shows how good he is when the car is good, and a mediocre car like this flatters sainz, however in this ranking I think leclerc and sainz should’ve been back to back.
montreal95 (@montreal95)
14th August 2024, 20:57
What?! A driver who out qualified and out raced Sainz, who spent much more laps in front of Sainz than Sainz spent in front of him, got more podiums than Sainz and is ranked ahead in the championship, that clearly hopeless driver is ranked in front of Sainz the GOAT?! No way!
Or, maybe someone else should wake up. You’ll meet him when you look into a mirror
Nick T.
14th August 2024, 22:25
Exactly. Sainz just out performing expectations and people think that means he’s done better. Neither are GOAT material. They’re easily capable of winning a WDC, but I wouldn’t expect either to win a WDC in a car that wasn’t the best car on the grid.
Jere (@jerejj)
14th August 2024, 19:26
I somehow guessed his ranking correctly, given how were left after Hulkenberg, & I assume Russell comes next.
Edvaldo
14th August 2024, 22:11
Leclerc is fast, races hard and knows how to win.
His weak spot is the management of tricky races. He always flounders, it’s not always Ferrari’s fault as he seems to be clueless more often than not when he needs to read the conditions and make the right calls.
So, apart from the few races he threw in the can because of that, good season. The car is not helping at the moment yet he’s always mixing with the faster top 6 cars.
Maciek (@maciek)
15th August 2024, 4:54
I dunno, maybe it’s just unfavourable optics, but Leclerc just doesn’t feel to me like a driver who’s got that laser focus. It’ll definitely be interesting to see him with Hamilton in the same machinery.
RBAlonso (@rbalonso)
15th August 2024, 9:37
I ranked Charles 4th ahead of Oscar – mainly because I think the rankings tend to be on comparative performance against teammates and Charles is doing a better job on that front than Piastri, and by a wide margin.
By my reckoning, Charles has obtained the maximum result possible 8 times this season. From 14 races, I don’t think that is stunning form but I think it’s impressive given Sainz achieved it four times. I’ve discounted Canada, due to unreliability, and Austria, where I think Sainz could have beaten either Russell or Piastri.
Of Charles 6 missed opportunities – in Bahrain he had a brake fault, in Australia he made a mess of quali, likewise in Japan. In both messed up qualifying events his race was much better – indeed his long stint in Japan was incredible. Then in Canada he had an engine failure, in Austria he had first lap contact (although was behind Sainz in sprint and quali) and in Britain he adopted another classic Ferrari strategy, but was behind Sainz in quali there too.
So overall, against a strong teammate in Sainz he’s beaten him 7 times, been beaten 5 – one with technical issues, 2 with poor Q3, one with a first corner accident and one with a poor strategy call. I think that given he’s been best of the rest, or rather as good as can be expected, more often than not that this has been a strong season for Charles. My fear with him is always the same though – when a weekend starts to unravel he never corrects it. That is why Carlos is always so close to him on points when the car is 2nd or 3rd best. Austria and Britain had mitigating circumstances – but they started poorly and got worse. The change is race engineer hasn’t really arrested the theme of poor pit wall comms either, missing sprint quali in Austria, Canada quali mistake and Britain strategy error.
JMDan (@danmar)
15th August 2024, 11:59
A Frenchman and an Englishman on the same team. Interesting. :-)
Dane
16th August 2024, 13:50
I know Racefans likes to not count Jeddah because Sainz didn’t race, but I think it was unlikely Sainz would’ve beaten him there. Charles was already ahead in both practice sessions before Sainz dropped out, then qualified P2 and finished first of the non Red Bulls. It was one of his best weekends and it’s a shame not to count it. Sainz was probably looking at P4 or 5 in that race.