INTERVIEW: Charles Leclerc on Hamilton and being “ready for the championship”

Initially, Ferrari is his team, one he knows inside out, and where he is idolised by the Tifosi, even if those six seasons have yet to yield the holy grail of a first drivers' championship since Kimi Räikkönen in 2007.

Leclerc had a glimpse of what might have been in 2022 when he started the year superbly, with two wins either side of a runner-up spot in the opening three grands prix. It was a year that faded under a catalogue of his own mistakes, as well as those from the pit wall, ultimately finishing a distant second to Max Verstappen.

Although Leclerc was third in the standings last year, he was significantly closer to now four-time champion Verstappen – 81 points shy compared to 146 two years previously. The crucial difference for Leclerc coming out of 2024 as opposed to 2022 is that he and Ferrari have momentum – and then there is Hamilton.

“He will bring a lot of motivation,” said Leclerc, in an interview with this writer for The New York Times. “Everybody's already super motivated, but when you've a seven-time champion joining the team and, obviously, this is the biggest move of the last many, many, many, many years, that gives a boost to the team.

“Everybody's proud of being part of that story, and we all want to make that story as successful as possible, and for me, the most beneficial to Ferrari as a whole.

“Then, of course, there's me as well. I want this story to be super good and successful. However, I also want to be part of that story and add my bit to it and having the dream in my mind of being a Formula 1 world champion, so it's going to be super interesting.

“I've always said that I'm super excited because, on one hand, I'm going to learn from one of the best ever, and on the other hand, it's also a great opportunity for me to be able to show what I can do against such an incredible driver.

"I'm always trying to be on top of my game, but obviously, with Lewis, it motivates me a lot as well.”

Crucially, at this stage before a wheel has turned in anger, the jury is out on which Hamilton will be behind the wheel of Ferrari's challenger for this season.

The past three years under the ground-effect regulations brought an abrupt end to Mercedes' domination of Formula 1 as Hamilton, and the team that helped him win six of his seven drivers' titles, struggled to get to grips with those rules.

The car never suited Hamilton, who turned 40 on 7^th January. It never allowed him to carry the speed under braking into corners, resulting in defeatist comments such as towards the end of last season, when he remarkably said he was no longer fast.

Contrast that to Las Vegas and the curtain-closer in Abu Dhabi, we witnessed a sublime Hamilton scything his way past his rivals, concluding with a last-lap-of-the-season pass on Mercedes team-mate George Russell that suggested he does still have it after all.

As to what car Ferrari provide him with will be a key question going into the pre-season test in Bahrain in late February, and then there is the great unknown of 2026 when new power unit and chassis rules threaten to shake up the entire field again.

Leclerc has faith in Hamilton, and that his own learning curve, and that of Ferrari, will rise.

“With how much success Lewis has had, it's going to be incredibly interesting to hear him and see how he used to work with other very successful teams, because whether he was with Mercedes and McLaren before, he won championships with both," said Leclerc.

“For sure, it will pull us upward, help us learn and see different perspectives in our ways of working.”

Leclerc will go into the new campaign buoyed by what he experienced in 2024, a year in which he scored a personal high of 356 points, and included sensational victories on home soil in Monaco, and for Ferrari at Monza.

There was an additional win in the United States, and a further ten visits to the podium, concluding with a second in Qatar, and a third in Abu Dhabi. There is momentum on his side given the carry-over of the car from last year into this.

“Looking back, I am satisfied with the season,” said Leclerc. “It's not been very often where I've looked back, and I've felt like there have been very few missed opportunities.

“We had an upgrade [at the Spanish Grand Prix] that didn't work properly and we had to put the car in places we didn't want to put it, but we learned something out of it.

“Putting everything together, it was a positive season. At the end of the day, we just missed performance, especially at the beginning of the season in order to be fighting for better things, but in terms of the team maximising what we had, we did a really good job.

“So, I have very good confidence we are doing everything right at the moment, and as a team we are a lot more solid. I'm not speaking much about the technical part of it because everything is relative. We don't know if Red Bull or McLaren have focused on 2025.

“We are just focusing on ourselves, trying to do the best possible job. The mentality within the team, and the way we work, is so much better and that we are a much more solid team.”

In tandem, Leclerc is also a much more solid driver. In 2024, the 27-year-old barely put a wheel out of place and now feels all the ingredients are in place for him to finally add an F1 title to his CV.

“I improved in the way that I accepted more when a weekend was not going exactly the way I wanted,” Leclerc said. “Whereas in the past, if things were not going exactly the way I wanted, if the car was not exactly the way I wanted, I was trying to find something within the car that was not there, and that was pushing me to make mistakes.

“It also sometimes pushed me to do something really good but I felt like it was biting more than it would reward me, so on that, I improved a lot. I feel like I maximised the points a lot more over the course of the season. 

“That doesn't mean I will never cross that line again. It's always a game of trying to get as close as possible to the limit without ever stepping over it, but I feel like I've done a step forward.

“And I now feel like I'm ready for the championship. We just need a car that, over the course of the season, is capable of providing that. I'm fully confident the next team to be able to do that will be us.”

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.