Charles Leclerc’s victory at the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix was the final shot in a championship bid doomed to failure.
Leclerc had won two of the opening three races to open a 46-point advantage over Max Verstappen, but the Dutchman fired back with five victories from the next six rounds to swing the season decisively in his favour.
Leclerc’s win at the Red Bull Ring was a tiny injection of hope for Ferrari, but a crash while attempting to defend an unlikely lead in France one round later put paid to the campaign.
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No matter. Ferrari had started the new regulatory era in fine form and with some creative takes on the rules. Back at the pointy end of the field, victories and title bids were sure to roll in.
Except they didn’t.
In the 87 grands prix he’s started since Austria, Leclerc has added just three more victories to his tally.
The last of them was at the 2024 United States Grand Prix. Winless all of last year and so far this season, he’s in the middle of an interminable 36-race victory drought.
He hasn’t had much of a car in that period either.
The title-contending Ferrari of 2022 never rematerialised. Though it came close to the constructors championship in 2024, it has badly lacked consistency, its performance trajectory more of a rollercoaster than the desired steady upwards curve.
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Worse, he’s been forced to watch other drivers — many of whom should have been behind him in the championship queue — rack up wins with impunity.
Verstappen of course has amassed 45 victories.
Lando Norris has won up all 11 of his victories in the years since, and Oscar Piastri has claimed nine of his own.
George Russell has won six times. Teenager Andrea Kimi Antonelli has won five times.
Even Carlos Sainz and Sergio Pérez have won three grands prix apiece in that time.
But there’s one driver whose tally since Austria 2022 could be more important than any of those.
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In the 1446 days, the supposedly down-and-out Lewis Hamilton, who spent most of that time in the doldrums with out-of-sorts Mercedes, has also claimed three wins.
Unlike Leclerc, though, his last one was just last race.
And that last one might have signalled the beginning of Ferrari’s first real crack at the drivers championship since 2022.
Drought Broken! Lewis’ 1st Ferrari win | 02:51
FERRARI FINALLY ON THE UP
Four years on from Leclerc’s last win in Spielberg, Ferrari again looks like it could be in championship contention, with this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix set out as a test of the team’s ability to challenge Mercedes.
From Leclerc’s Ferrari debut in 2019, there’s been no real question that he would be the driver to see that challenge through.
In his first season for the Scuderia he became the team’s second-youngest driver and, later that year, its youngest ever winner. When he claimed victory at the Italian Grand Prix that same season, he earned the nickname Il Predestinato — literally the predestined one — his status as Ferrari’s saviour confirmed.
But it’s been a long slog for the team’s saviour since then.
His remarkable 27 poles but paltry eight victories are indicative of Ferrari’s inability to deliver the sort of car worthy of his abilities. His relationship with the team was tested at various points — most notably during the era of Mattia Binotto’s team principalship — but he’s stuck at it, and this year he re-signed on a long-term deal that could take him deep into the 2030s.
For as long as he’s been with the team, Ferrari has lacked polish, lacked those final percentage points to contend with Mercedes and then Red Bull Racing, both of which have been slicker and more consistent in execution.
Frédéric Vasseur was drafted into the team principal role in 2023 as a team builder and began reorganising Maranello in pursuit of those last pieces of the puzzle.
One year later he secured the biggest coup in recent F1 history: seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton’s title-winning ability is clear, but he would bring with him fresh perspective from the most dominant team of the decade.
It amounted to little last year, but Hamilton has praised Vasseur for backing the changes he said were required to get the best out of him during the off-season.
This year we’re seeing Hamilton performing at a much higher level — enough to claim the first victory of his and Leclerc’s Ferrari partnership.
Hamilton’s win in Spain threatened to reconfigure out understanding of this season, with what seemed like a walk to both championships for Mercedes suddenly looking far more open.
Though Barcelona was the only one of seven races so far to be won by a non-Mercedes driver — and one of only two not won by Andrea Kimi Antonelli — the margins are surprisingly narrow.
Hamilton is just 41 points off the title lead, and Ferrari is only 72 points behind Mercedes. With 15 grands prix remaining, there’s plenty of time for a momentum shift to reroute the championship.
But there’s another gap important to consider. While Hamilton can still see Antonelli on the horizon, Leclerc cannot. After two scoreless grands prix in succession, the Monegasque is 40 points behind Hamilton and, critically, 81 points off the title lead.
That’s an improbable margin, even with so many races to go.
Destiny is suddenly looking shaky.
‘This one is something else’ | 01:29
HAMILTON SETS THE TONE
While Spain could have been an important moment in the championship, it’s important not to overstate it.
Ferrari has one victory, achieved because of car speed and strategy in equal parts. Hamilton had the pace to win the race but probably not to dominate it without the late virtual safety car.
It was also the team’s first race with a major upgrade. Mercedes will reply eventually, which could reset the order — notwithstanding that Ferrari has an engine upgrade coming this weekend that could make a more lasting difference to the season.
There are no guarantees that Ferrari can kick on from here. Mercedes isn’t beaten for having lost a single race.
But Hamilton’s form looks real. Not only is he clearly performing at a higher level than he was last year, but he’s been doing so across enough races to know this isn’t luck or circumstance.
It’s hard to say how close he is to his best, but he’s obviously much closer to it than he has been at Ferrari.
It means he’s also the sternest test Leclerc has had not just of his position as Ferrari’s lead driver but also of his title-winning credentials.
The results so far have made for interesting reading.
In Canada Leclerc was off his teammate’s pace, particularly in the race. He put this down to troubles with the brakes that robbed him of the sort of confidence he needed to tackle Montreal’s big braking zones.
His bid for pole in Monaco was derailed by a crash on his final Q3 lap. Judging race pace in Monte Carlo is difficult given it’s dictated by where you are in the train, but he looked a match for Hamilton before he crashed out of the race, which he blamed again on the brakes.
These were on the surface explainable incidents, but it was interesting that Leclerc responded by switching brake material, from Brembo to Carbon Industrie, for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.
Brembo has supplied Ferrari for more than half a century, but Hamilton had been pushing for the swap, having used the French supplier for his entire career. Both drivers sampled Carbon Industrie during practice in Japan, but for the race Leclerc decided to stick with Brembo discs, which he’d used his entire career.
But in Spain he acquiesced. Then he crashed out Q3 at turn 4, leaving him 0.538 seconds and eight grid places behind Hamilton.
This wasn’t a brakes-related incident, though — Leclerc insists he’s getting along well with his new discs. It looked like a clear case of Leclerc chasing speed that Hamilton was achieving but that he couldn’t.
“I think I was braking very late into turn 4, which had been visible, and I think Charles probably tried to carry a lot of speed into that corner, and unfortunately it didn’t work out for him,” Hamilton said afterwards.
Leclerc was decisively slower than Hamilton in race trim on Sunday until his race was halted by a power steering problem, Ferrari’s first case of race-ending unreliability this season.
Hamilton overcome after iconic victory | 01:27
LECLERC’S CHALLENGE
It would be foolishly premature to write Leclerc off on the basis of three disappointing weekends, particularly given it was only in Spain that he was comprehensively beaten by Hamilton without an external culprit to blame for the deficit.
But his challenge is to prove these three races were only a blip while his teammate proves what the car is capable of.
Leclerc has been tested before.
His first teammate was four-time champion Sebastian Vettel — formidable, even if he overcame the German in their first season together.
Carlos Sainz then gave him a run for his money, particularly in 2023 and then again in 2024, when they came close to winning the constructors championship together. While Leclerc was the quicker driver, Sainz’s adaptability and his ability to think his way through grands prix made him a rough match.
Hamilton, though, is the toughest challenge yet.
The most successful driver in history with 20 years of experience, there are precious few tools missing in his toolbox. That is, after all, why he was brought to Ferrari — to bring the team the missing pieces it needed to complete its championship rejuvenation.
It’s not surprising that Leclerc could have things to learn from the elder statesman.
Hamilton has been vociferously and stubbornly arguing for the changes he knows he needs to get the best from himself. He isn’t afraid to take the team to task when he feels it’s needed, including over team radio.
Leclerc, however, has always come across as more passive in his dealings with the team. Though, on the one hand, Ferrari has naturally built itself around him and his needs as the quickest driver, there were clearly times during his partnership with Sainz in particular at which it would have paid for him to be more forceful with engineers about what he needed from the car and with strategists over how the race was unfolding.
Following Hamilton on brake material after some tough races — having earlier this year been against the change — fits that passive narrative.
Leclerc has learned from and become better for his previous teammates, but the difference with Hamilton this season is that the stakes are much higher.
Not only does he have to match the resurgent seven-time champion, but he’ll have to do it under the pressure of a possible title campaign. Hamilton has been there and done that; for all Leclerc’s clear and obvious ability, sealing the championship is its own test, and he’s yet to pass.
Leclerc has a long-term deal with Ferrari, and at 28 years old, he can still be the team’s future regardless of what happens this season.
But whereas last year the Monegasque’s reputation was enhanced for Hamilton allowing himself to be easily beaten, this year it’s clear he will have to find a way to beat the Briton to maintain that trajectory.
The promise of Il Predestinato is at stake.