{"id":97573,"date":"2025-08-28T01:10:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T01:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/97573\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T01:10:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T01:10:19","slug":"the-nagging-charles-leclerc-question-which-would-prevent-ferrari-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/97573\/","title":{"rendered":"The nagging Charles Leclerc question which would prevent Ferrari exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Leclerc has dedicated years to the Scuderia Ferrari team, but that dedication has so far failed to pay off in the form of a World championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s the hope of that championship that keeps him with the team, as Ferrari mechatronics engineer Francesco Cigarini believes that Leclerc fears a change of team would come at the exact moment the Prancing Horse becomes a formidable contender.<\/p>\n

Why Charles Leclerc\u2019s dedication remains with Ferrari<\/p>\n

Back in 2016, Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc was signed to the Ferrari Driver Academy with the intention of guiding him into the outfit\u2019s Formula 1 team. After a season with Sauber in 2018, Leclerc made the jump to Ferrari for 2019, and it\u2019s been there that he has remained.<\/p>\n

As part of the Prancing Horse stable, Leclerc has taken eight Formula 1 victories and secured a best finish in the drivers\u2019 championship of second back in 2022.<\/p>\n

Naturally, his hopes trend toward winning a World Championship \u2013 and as Ferrari mechatronics engineer Francesco Cigarini told Formula1.it, it\u2019s that hope that keeps Lelcerc around.<\/p>\n

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Cigarini was very complimentary of Leclerc, calling him \u201ca huge talent, a huge one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew him when he was little and I loved him right away, partly because he was what we had been missing with Jules Bianchi.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we suddenly lost a friend, a leading driver, and then we found [Leclerc], who could rekindle this hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t deny that we saw a lot of Jules in Charles: he is a huge talent, also an explosive talent that needed to be tamed over the years, because you have the talent but you have to work hard on the team, on letting them know what you want, on being able to work and make the tyres work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are all aspects that you find over time, by working.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for all of those positive associations, Leclerc has yet to win a World Championship, prompting Formula1.it to ask if there\u2019s any chance that the Monegasque driver could one day hang up his Ferrari overalls for those of a different team \u2014 a team, perhaps, more capable of helping him secure that honor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s possible,\u201d Cigarini admitted, \u201cbut in my opinion, his thinking is, \u2018What if I change teams and in a year or two Ferrari puts the car I need to win the World Championship on the track?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThen you have to see what alternatives you have and how certain you are about those alternatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked myself the same question when I decided to leave: \u2018What if the next one is the right one and we start winning again?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at a certain point, I made my choice, so he could make the choice. I don\u2019t see it as feasible for now, but I\u2019ll tell you that in my opinion, the question he\u2019s asking himself is: \u2018What if I finally leave everything I want from the car and it comes the following year?’\u201d<\/p>\n

While every F1 driver hopes to take a title, there is indeed a certain prestige which comes with winning that title for a team like Ferrari \u2014 and Cigarini was asked if he believed Leclerc\u2019s regret at not winning with Ferrari would be greater than not winning a championship at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but it depends on his position within Ferrari,\u201d Cigarini explained, \u201cbecause if, for example, he realises that he no longer has the same feeling as before, at some point he will have to leave, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has the lofty ambition of bringing the title to Ferrari and he\u2019s doing it for himself, because it\u2019s a path he wanted to take and he\u2019s fully committed to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That commitment will continue; Leclerc extended his Ferrari partnership in 2024, and while the terms of that agreement aren\u2019t specifically clear, he committed himself for the next \u201cseveral seasons to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

The F1 2026 season will bring with it a complete regulatory transformation, which means that once again, the status quo will almost certainly face a major upheaval, one that Leclerc will be hoping will come along with a better shot at securing the World Championship.<\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0Fred Vasseur was \u2018nervous\u2019 as major Ferrari suspension upgrade admission made<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc has dedicated years to the Scuderia Ferrari team, but that dedication has so far failed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1665,1687,831,372,6537,348,50,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-97573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}