MONTE CARLO – A red family named Ferrari is looking at him full of hope and faith, but he has not yet been able to fulfill their championship aspirations.
Monaco racer Charles Leclerc has been driving for F1’s most famous stable since 2019, when he was just a young and inexperienced ear, but ready to face the toughest test in the world of ruthless sharks with sharp teeth. You wouldn’t find practically a single fan of the “red sufferers” on planet Earth who would say that Leclerc won’t win the title one day.
Faith was steadfast and the plan quite clear. First of all, to be the team number two for Sebastian Vettel in the pursuit of the coveted title, which he did not win in the end, although he had a strong chance of winning it, but he also prepared for it through his own mistakes, and then to gradually attack as a team unit with millions of Tifosi behind him. Many an aching red heart will remember the accident at the German Hockenheim in the summer of 2018, which was the beginning of the disaster for Sebastian Vettel.
Maybe Ferrari fans thought that if Alonso didn’t win the title and Vettel didn’t win our hearts, Leclerc’s turn will come and thanks to his age he will stay with the team for many years and deliver not one title but many more. They were not even afraid of competition in the form of Verstappen, Hamilton or other heavyweights. Dreams are one thing, but the bare and harsh reality is quite another.
Cut to the beginning of 2026 and reality is gray and the light at the end of the blocked tunnel is somehow not appearing. Leclerc is still waiting for the first grail of the F1 champion and his outlook is not exactly optimistic and positive, although he certainly believes that his name will be mentioned in debates about the biggest aspirants for the title already this year.
The Chosen One, Il Predestinato, or in English The Chosen One. His full name is Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc, also known as Karol by the Slovak community.
Young Charles is now a man who is engaged to his girlfriend Alexandra Saint Mleux, but his time on the gridiron seems to be running out. No, he is definitely not ending his career, but maybe half of it is already behind him. If you were to ask people from the F1 paddock who they think is the best pilot without a title, the name of the 28-year-old from Monaco would come out of many mouths. But talk is just talk, in the world of F1’s tough millions, results need to be delivered and words turned into action.
As you read correctly in the previous paragraph, before we know it, Leclerc will be celebrating a round jubilee. But no one expected that with almost zero championship titles to his name. At the same time, during his 171 starts in F1, Leclerc clearly demonstrated that he is rightly called “master material”.
He saw the red lights go out before his eyes 171 times and turned all this into 50 podium positions, 27 of which he started first, but won only eight times. Little? A lot? Definitely not enough. Everyone knows that the potential of the lover of many female admirers goes much higher.
Leclerc has long been known to be able to pull off the impossible from his car, especially in qualifying. There is a lot of evidence, the freshest one we remember from the 2025 season, where he burned a pond in Hungary at the Hungaroring and clearly won the pole position. What happened during Sunday’s race was no longer so cheerful, Leclerc only finished fourth.
The hope for Leclerc and also his teammate Lewis Hamilton, who has enough problems with himself and his below-average performances, is to change the rules from the 2026 season. There is no need to list them all here, but Ferrari has already been working on a single-seater for the 2026 season since April 2025, focusing primarily on aerodynamic performance.
Photo gallery (2) Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton – will they improve their performance in the new season? Source: Martin Trenkler
Leclerc himself said that the 2026 season is for Ferrari “now or never”.
The last title for the red team was won by Kimi Räikkönen in the 2007 season. Since then, first Fernando Alonso, then Sebastian Vettel have tried in vain, and based on the first race, it seems that Lewis Hamilton will remain only miles away. Is Ferrari riddled with a secret curse that will linger for some time to come?
The fans put all their hope and perspective in the likeable Monaco. To the boy they believe can coddle the hot Italian heads of their mechanics in the garage. Glowing brains that primarily think and act with emotions. Heads that don’t always make rational decisions. If only Michael Schumacher was fit enough to advise Leclerc and pass on valuable lessons on how to deal with the crazy Italians when he won five titles in a row and made F1 his own living room.
Two decades later, Ferrari experienced a season in which it did not win a single race. Zero. Now Leclerc and the whole team are extremely positive. After all, this is always the case before the start of a new year, and the mood gradually declines, until finally it slips into a frenzy, where supporters wave their hands at another miserable result of their favorites, but their souls bleed inside.
“The whole team is extremely motivated for next year because it’s such a big change and a huge opportunity to show what Ferrari can do. It’s now or never, so I really hope we start this new era on the right foot because it’s important for the next four years. I think after about the sixth or seventh race we’ll have a good idea of which teams will dominate the next four years.” said the motivated Monacan.
Leclerc’s words sound motivated and bold, and we won’t lie if we say that every true F1 fan wants a powerful Ferrari, because then the queen of motorsport is more interesting, more engaging, when cars with red noses fight for the top positions.
After all, just look at any weekend. If you’ve had the chance to visit a race in person, you may have felt like you were in the Red Sea. Of course, there were Red Bull, McLaren or Mercedes shirts, but even with the naked eye it is obvious which team boasts the biggest fan support.
The truth remains that Leclerc is at an age where he should be at the peak of his powers, because he is already bent enough from all sides and knows how the ruthless world of F1 works. Instead of fighting for the championship trophy and the battle at the top, he is struggling with a lot of question marks about what quality car Ferrari will deliver him and whether he will be able to fight for the title.
If even Ferrari will be better in the new season – to be honest, it can hardly be worse, but you never know – will the improved performance of the two red formulas be enough for the dominant McLarens or Max Verstappen? Lando Norris will be even hungrier as he looks to defend his title, not to mention his teammate Oscar Piastre, last year’s underdog.
And there are other heavyweights in the field, because who would dare to write off the four-time champion Max Verstappen, or the sometimes inconspicuous George Russell from Mercedes?
Leclerc found himself in an unenviable situation. He has no idea if he will benefit from the rule change or if he will be in team synergy with the whole of Ferrari. It would be presumptuous to pin Lewis Hamilton’s hopes at this point, but it would also be extremely foolish to underestimate him in any way.
Therefore, a crystal clear and extremely clear question is pressing on the tongue – will Charles Leclerc win the title in the 2026 season, or at least get significantly closer to it? If not, it doesn’t say anywhere that he won’t decide to look for greener pastures somewhere else.
As William Sloane Coffin, an American clergyman and peace activist, once said: “Hope inspires, like nothing else, a passion for the possible.”
I believe so. And passion, they really have so much to give away in the Ferrari family that even if they dedicated it all to someone else, they would still be left with four gigantic kicks. Now everyone must arm themselves with hope and faith and hope that together Ferrari will be able to achieve the set goal.
Because not only in life, but also in sports, it is true that we live here and now and we can only console ourselves with history for a while. Ferrari, Leclerc, but also Hamilton need to deliver triumphant results. And that immediately.
- Author: © List/ Ondrej Herceg
- Source: Sports shoes
