Charles Leclerc has not had the chance to mount a season-long Formula 1 title bid yet in his career. But neither had Max Verstappen before 2021.
After Ferrari’s strong 2022 start faded before the season even reached the summer break, and its cars proved too capricious to be in the mix through 2023 and 2024, Leclerc’s hope will be that 2025 is different.
Then, if all goes well, Leclerc can do what Verstappen did and become world champion at the first real opportunity.
Leclerc starts 2025 in the shadow of Ferrari’s new megastar signing Lewis Hamilton, at least in terms of public attention. But many think Leclerc will be the team’s lead driver on-track to start with, and that the balance of power will remain in his favour if some of Hamilton’s difficulties with this generation of ground-effect F1 car continue.
He also proved to be the emphatic choice for the 2025 title among The Race F1 Podcast’s live show attendees last month, winning almost one-third of the audience vote ahead of Lando Norris and Hamilton. Red Bull’s four-time world champion Verstappen only earned the fourth-highest share. That was a concentrated sample set of several hundred dedicated, predominantly British, fans.
The Race Live Show fan vote for 2025 champion
Charles Leclerc: 32.14%
Lando Norris: 17.86%
Lewis Hamilton: 16.88%
Max Verstappen: 14.29%
Want to listen to the Live Show recording? You can buy it on The Race's Patreon page now.
All signs do point to 2025 being Leclerc’s best chance yet. And to him being ready for it.
Ferrari ended 2024 on its most convincing competitive trajectory in recent memory. Its solid start was undone by a flawed upgrade at June’s Spanish Grand Prix, but it was able to correct that misstep during the year so well that it overhauled Red Bull and nearly pipped McLaren to the constructors’ championship.
OK, it was not exactly a period of dominance. There were ‘only’ two wins for Leclerc and one for team-mate Carlos Sainz, and McLaren still enjoyed a small but decisive outright performance advantage in qualifying on average, in the 10 races after the summer break.
But no team scored more points than Ferrari after the summer break. No driver scored more points than Leclerc after the summer break either. Both showed title-winning form, especially at a point in the season where the competition between the lead four teams and their various drivers was incredibly fierce.
Leclerc’s dependability was at an all-time high in probably his best F1 season yet, as while no driver puts together the perfect year and all (even Verstappen against Sergio Perez) have their days where they are simply second-best, he cut back on the mistakes, usually delivered to a very high level, and was second in The Race’s 2024 driver rankings for a reason.
It was a real achievement to come so close to finishing runner-up in the championship driving a car that, over the whole year, was not on the same level as the McLaren. Three wins to Norris’s four and Verstappen’s nine, plus 13 podiums (the same as Norris and only one fewer than Verstappen) is another marker of how high-level consistency underpinned Leclerc’s season.
The board resets for 2025, which presents different challenges. Ferrari has yet to show that it can consistently produce the fastest car. And Leclerc will start from zero with Verstappen and Norris, who were drawn into their own squabbles in late-2024.
Ultimately, team and driver still need to prove that they can do the job over a full season. Hopes are high for a reason, though. If Leclerc can’t even come close this year it will be a surprise, and a disappointment.
