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Laurence Edmondson
Even before he first raced for Ferrari in Formula 1, Charles Leclerc had earned the nickname Il Predestinato — the Predestined One. Italy’s longstanding commentator Carlo Vanzini claims to have coined the moniker when a teenage Leclerc, who was part of the Ferrari Driver Academy at the time, visited Sky Italy for media training as part of his progression towards F1.
“It all goes back to an early encounter,” Vanzini recalled several years later. “We had a press conference simulation where I asked him something like: ‘You’re starting on pole today but your teammate is racing for the title, what are you going to do?’ To which he answered, ‘I race to win.’
“So we sat there and came up with a more diplomatic answer, something along the lines of, ‘I’ll focus on my race, but I will help the team wherever necessary.’ But then this boy came up to me later and told me the question I had asked was fundamentally wrong because ‘there is no way my teammate will be the one fighting for the championship and not me.'”
Vanzini’s repetition of Il Predestinato during his commentary of Leclerc’s first two victories with Ferrari in 2019 ensured the nickname stuck. There was hope throughout Italy that the predestined one — Ferrari’s homegrown talent who joined its academy in 2015 and won the Italian Grand Prix four years later — might finally put an end to a drivers’ title drought that stretches back to 2007.
Leclerc’s struggle to do so during his Ferrari career is more fairly attributed to team’s failings than his own. The arrival of Frédéric Vasseur as team principal in 2023 has helped flatten out Ferrari’s roller-coaster form, but it was only towards the end of last year that things really started to click into place.
Over the final 10 races of 2024, Leclerc scored more points than any other driver on the grid, including a second career victory at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Combined with a memorable home win in Monaco earlier in the season and a third victory in Austin towards the end, it was big year for Leclerc, even though his points total left him 81 short of Max Verstappen in the final championship standings. Such recent momentum means he heads into the 2025 season with a shot at fulfilling the destiny that was bestowed upon him all those years ago.
“I had quite a few dreams growing up: one was to be a Formula 1 driver, then to be a Ferrari driver, then to win Monza, then Monaco, which I did,” Leclerc said. “Now it’s only about being a world champion — it’s my obsession.
“I’ll do whatever it takes and I’ll do absolutely everything in order for me to achieve that. Of course, it also relies on outside factors that I cannot completely control, but I’ll just do the best with what I can control.”
However, unlike his previous six seasons at Ferrari, to become world champion this year, Leclerc will need to beat a seven-time champion in the same machinery. The arrival of Lewis Hamilton has been seismic for Ferrari this winter, and as the incumbent teammate, the reverberations have been unavoidable for Leclerc.
During media commitments in preseason testing, almost every other question thrown at Leclerc was delivered with some sort of Hamilton twist — to the point that an email landed on the morning of our interview saying all questions about Hamilton would be off limits. So, without addressing the subject of his new teammate directly, has Leclerc felt the need to change his preparations over the winter?
“No, I haven’t done anything different in the end,” he said to ESPN. “It’s all about trying to learn from past small mistakes, and especially last year I think the year was a very good execution.
“So we’ve done a good job, and the car wasn’t there at the beginning of the season, so we paid the price at the end of the season. The thing that we had to do is to keep working in the right direction and do small steps after small steps and keep that work ethic that we’ve had because it was working.
“However, if this is enough to win the world championship this year, we’ll see. During testing, McLaren seemed to be very strong, so we’ve got to wait and see before judging where we are. But I think we are working extremely well as a team and I’m confident that we’ve done everything that was in our control to be in the best place possible.”
Vasseur believes having the seven-time champion in the team will come with several benefits for Leclerc.
“Honestly, from day one when we started the discussion with Lewis, I was convinced that Charles will benefit also a lot of this deal,” Vasseur said. “Perhaps that this is releasing a bit of pressure on his shoulders and he can be a bit more focused on his own and so on, this is good.
“And also that he can learn from Lewis, because Lewis is a mega professional and you can always take something from someone. After two or three years of collaboration with Charles, to have a new teammate is also the best way to improve yourself.”
Vasseur says he welcomes healthy competition between his drivers. During the offseason he has regularly used the word “emulation” to describe the dynamic he wants to see between Leclerc and Hamilton, and he believes Ferrari will always be stronger if it has two drivers pushing each other to the limit.
“They are both champions with a huge motivation, huge enthusiasm, and they are pushing the team to the limit,” Vasseur added. “We need to have this kind of internal competition between them. Internal ‘fight’ is not the right word, I’m looking for the right word in French first — ’emulation’ probably, between the team and the drivers, because the performance is coming from this.
“If you have a look last year or the last two years, we had sometimes huge competition on track between the two drivers, but this was part of the final result. And the fact that in this business in every single session the first comparison is with your teammate, every single session they were in this kind of competition. And we need to have the same this year, I don’t want to avoid it.”
Yet F1’s history suggests two teammates competing for the same championship often boils over into something more disruptive. Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost at McLaren; Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber at Red Bull; Hamilton against former McLaren teammate Fernando Alonso and against former Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg — the examples of internal politics erupting during a title fight are plentiful over the years.
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So does Leclerc think, theoretically, it’s possible for two teammates to fight for a title and keep things cordial?
“I’m sure we can,” he says, apparently happy to cut to the chase and recognize the true meaning of the question. “I mean if two drivers managed to separate what happens on track and off the track, then for sure. But yeah, I don’t know exactly because I’ve never been in a position of fighting for a world title with my teammate.
“With Lewis, we are getting on super well and I have no doubt that it will go well. It will be a very good problem to have to be fighting for the drivers’ title together. We’ll see, but I have no doubt that it will go well.”
One thing remains certain: if Hamilton is in a title fight at the final race of the season, Leclerc will expect to be right there with him.
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