On his final qualifying run, however, disaster struck \u2013 he clipped the barrier at Portier and damaged his left driveshaft. The car was fixed and returned to the starting grid for the formation lap, but only just. On the formation lap, the driveshaft finally failed, and Charles Leclerc was forced to retire before the race had even begun. <\/p>\n
It was heartbreak for Monaco\u2019s local hero, who, long before Ferrari and Formula 1, would watch the race from balconies overlooking the circuit and imagine himself behind the wheel. <\/p>\n
In 2017, a year before Leclerc\u2019s Ferrari seat was secured, his father Herv\u00e9 lay seriously ill, and he told him a white lie: that the deal was done. That he had made it. Herv\u00e9 died believing his son was about to become a Formula 1 driver.<\/p>\n
Seven years later, Leclerc returned to the same circuit, took pole again, lap after lap, around the streets where he grew up. As the closing stages ticked down, his race engineer repeatedly reminded him to stay focused. Leclerc’s replies became shorter and quieter. He later admitted he was thinking about his father.<\/p>\n
When the chequered flag finally fell, confirming Charles Leclerc as a Monaco Grand Prix winner, it was unlike anything seen in recent Formula 1 memory. For once, Monaco had given one of its own a happy ending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On his final qualifying run, however, disaster struck \u2013 he clipped the barrier at Portier and damaged his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-716380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}