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Ask Charles Leclerc to jot down his goals for a Formula 1 season and the list will look something like:
- Win the world championship
- Win the Monaco Grand Prix
- Win the Italian Grand Prix
Two out of three in 2024 is not bad going. But despite arguably Leclerc's strongest season yet, the big prize remains elusive after another up-and-down Ferrari campaign.
"It's been a season that, emotionally speaking, was really contrasting," Leclerc says in an interview with The Race and ESPN.
"Because I've had the two wins that I always dream of, which is Monaco and Monza.
"But at the same time, we went through a time where we had to experience things with the set-up, and we went through very tricky parts with the car where it was very difficult to drive, that pushed us to not optimise our weekend.
"It was difficult to then come back to our form.
"So, when you look back at the season, there were highs and lows - but the highs were very high and the lows were very low."
That must carry some frustration given Leclerc has been F1's form driver (relative to everyone's machinery) this side of the summer break, having also overachieved before it. Which is in keeping with a high-quality season.
The mistakes have been fewer than ever - although he did contribute to Austria being a “weekend to forget”, and his British GP was something similar even with some extenuating circumstances - and at times he has dragged his Ferrari to podiums that seemed impossible.
That he has beaten team-mate Carlos Sainz in the last six races, despite Sainz enjoying a perfectly good season of his own, is a testament to Leclerc's consistency as well as his peaks. And for a championship that has become a two-horse race between Red Bull and McLaren, Leclerc's playing the role of interloper well: two wins, nine podiums, three pole positions and - for now - third in the championship.
So, is this the best version of Leclerc we've seen in F1 so far - and does the man himself think there is a sense of his own performances not quite being matched by outright results?
"Yes, sometimes there are seasons that are quite frustrating in one way because you do a really good job but it kind of looks normal because you are fifth or sixth because the car is just not good enough," he says.
"But I feel like I am improving race after race, season after season, so, yeah. I feel it is that way.
"But I'll keep pushing, keep working on things that I still don't like when I look at the data about the way I drive and the way I work. Hopefully I'll get even better."
BRIEF DOUBTS
The form over the past half a dozen races or so has emphatically banished memories of the brief dip across Australia and Japan at the start of the season, in which Leclerc felt a little lost in a Ferrari that he couldn't quite get the most out of in qualifying.
There was a slight parallel between the early races of this year and the tricky period Leclerc went through with last year's Ferrari. A more compliant, stable Ferrari looked after its tyres better at the start of 2024 but this potentially came at the cost of the front-end agility Leclerc craves.
This doesn't align with Leclerc's natural, attacking style that works the rear hard, whereas it typically suits Sainz better. It was an easier car on paper, but one Leclerc struggled to maximise at times. But the biggest factor of all was that the capricious nature of these cars combined with the Pirelli tyres makes tyre warm-up a real menace.
"Actually I had forgot about that!" Leclerc laughs when The Race mentions the tyre warm-up problems from Japan in particular.
"That was probably one of the main reasons, if not the main reason at the beginning of season where I was struggling - sometimes the pace was there and the lap was really, really good but for some reason, just the grip available, because my outlap was done in a particularly wrong way, the laptime was just not great. And that was very frustrating.
"However, I've worked a lot on it, and from that moment it got better. But it is true that if there's a little bit less sun, if there's just a cloud going over the track, that makes a huge difference on tyres. And you've got to change and constantly adapt to a very slight change of conditions, which is not easy."
Even with a horrible mid-season dip for Ferrari itself (which neither driver could do anything about), Leclerc has evidently got on top of those specific issues.
However, he admits to having brief doubts about how short-term it would be at the time.
"I would lie if you are confident in those moments that the pace is going to come back," he says.
"Every time you have a tough race, you just try and analyse, and then as soon as you find the cause, you are quite confident that it comes back.
"But you still want to see it, next time you're out on track, that things are getting back on the right way, and that you're back into the right pace."
FERRARI PEAKINESS
There is a peakiness in this generation of cars that Ferrari has not quite mitigated as well as its rivals. When the SF-24 is in its sweet spot on circuits that bring the best out of it, Leclerc can fight for poles and wins. But it's the usual strengths: agility, changes of direction in slow corners, good traction.
It's as though as soon as Ferrari tries to add downforce in medium- and high-speed corners, it seems to trigger porpoising, or it can't quite judge the aerodynamic behaviour in long-duration corners, and suffers from understeer and oversteer at the same time.
"If you look along all the teams it's not like previous generation of cars, where you could see that whenever a team had momentum, they had understood something, and they are just getting better," Leclerc contends.
"Apart from McLaren recently, it's really up and down. You see sometimes Mercedes performing super well and then struggling. You see us as well, sometimes performing super well, and sometimes we are struggling quite a bit more. You see Red Bull also now, that have been super strong for many years, and now are struggling a little bit more.
"This generation of cars are a lot more difficult to understand and the slightest detail can have a big influence, and it makes a big difference on track. And the fact that we are so close together means you pay for the smallest mistake a lot more compared to previous generations of cars."
This has been a tougher second season with team boss Fred Vasseur at the helm, and Ferrari is in transition on the technical front. Long-time chassis leader Enrico Cardile is leaving and there is a big signing from Mercedes - Loic Serra - joining in October as technical director, a slightly bigger role than Serra had actually agreed to take on when Ferrari swooped for him last year.
Leclerc is a big believer in Vasseur, and is convinced there are signs of progress. The new floor Ferrari brought after the summer break is intended to be a key weapon in finally making its car more of an all-rounder.
That hasn't been established by the three races it has been used in because they have been outlier tracks: high-speed/low-downforce Monza, then two street circuits in Baku and Singapore. So the jury's out until after this gap in the schedule, when tracks like Austin and Qatar will test the Ferrari more. But Leclerc is confident.
"We are seeing quite a lot of gains," he says. "We just need time to bring those upgrades on the car."
Asked if that means the title is realistic next year, he replies flatly: "Yes. It is." Then he laughs: "That will be the headline!"
"Obviously it is a constant process that keeps evolving and the goal is to always make it better," he adds.
"So I would say that '25 will be good, '26 will be better and '27 will be even better and we optimise everything. But it's all relative.
"There is not one team that is getting worse from one year to the other. It's how much of a step forward the others have done.
"But on our side I have zero doubts that we will make a step forward next year and another one the year after."
HAMILTON CURIOSITIES
Leclerc's verdict could be music to the ears of one Lewis Hamilton.
The seven-time F1 world champion's impending arrival at Ferrari in 2025 has faded into the background since the blockbuster revelation earlier this year but as next season approaches it will become a dominant story again. And Leclerc cannot wait.
"I will be super curious to see what he has done right for all his career to have had all the success that he's had," he says.
"He has very little weaknesses - well actually, I don't know any weaknesses of Lewis. He's a super strong driver, always there, super fast, super consistent.
"It will be super interesting for me to learn from Lewis, as much as showing what I am capable of in the same car as Lewis. These two things motivate me a lot."
There are not many drivers who could imagine beating Hamilton in the same car. His Mercedes team-mate George Russell has proven himself faster on Saturdays in their three seasons together, especially this year, and yet Hamilton often finds ways to get back ahead on Sundays.
However, Leclerc could assert himself ahead of Hamilton in qualifying and races as while he is prodigiously quick over one lap he is also quite underrated in his tyre management and race execution, which is where Hamilton has ultimately retained an edge over Russell.
"Well, that's good to hear," Leclerc says when The Race puts it to him that a lot of people do think he's quick enough to beat Hamilton.
"I don't really think about what the expectations are because for me I have just got to focus on what I have to do.
"I always like to focus a lot more on the process to try and achieve great things instead of [first] thinking about the great things and then thinking about the process."
This will be a different scenario for Hamilton than at Mercedes with Russell. At Ferrari, Hamilton will find someone already embedded in the team and who obviously has a longer future there than he does - but who Hamilton will have made the choice to partner knowing exactly how big an on-track threat he will be.
There will be no surprises, no misaligned expectations, nothing like that. And having what Leclerc calls "communal passions" can't hurt either - like fashion, music, and animals. "It's cool, we have a very good relationship and I'm sure it will stay that way," Leclerc insists.
Leclerc clearly relishes the arrival of a superstar team-mate. And he'll back himself to beat him. He displaced Sebastian Vettel as Ferrari's number one, after all, and has retained that status despite Sainz's best efforts.
"Since I got into Formula 1, I have been very lucky," Leclerc says.
"Instead of thinking that I wish I had a number two driver as a team-mate, I have always thought it is so much better to have the best as your team-mate.
"I have had very, very fast team-mates who have pushed me forward and with Lewis I will learn a lot as well.
Leclerc's also too good for Hamilton not to benefit from being alongside him, too. Hamilton's not had the longevity and success he's had by operating with tunnel vision. And Leclerc's remarks about the performance swings in these cars, the finicky nature of the tyres? That's the same stuff that Hamilton has struggled with at Mercedes.
Maybe that's where Hamilton, given his disagreements with knife-edge ground-effect cars, could learn from Leclerc? Leclerc agrees they are "super peaky" and something "very difficult to understand and to feel". Beyond that, though, Leclerc's wary of overstepping.
"Lewis is still incredibly fast," he says.
"He is still Lewis Hamilton. So, I don't think he needs any advice from me!"
