Charles Leclerc believes Lewis Hamilton is becoming a member of Ferrari on the excellent time due to the place the staff is in its journey in the direction of successful a System 1 world championship.
Ferrari completed a detailed second to McLaren in final 12 months’s constructors’ championship, whereas Leclerc himself scored probably the most factors of any driver after final 12 months’s summer season break. With Hamilton arriving from Mercedes to nice fanfare, his new teammate believes Ferrari was prepared for such an addition due to the way in which staff principal Fred Vasseur has bought the Scuderia working.
“I believe Lewis is coming into the staff on the proper time,” Leclerc stated. “I believe Fred is a man that has a really large energy of retaining the emotional stage of the staff at an excellent stage, and we’ve been a lot extra stable on that within the final years.
“Clearly the truth that Lewis has joined the staff has been a giant increase and has been superb in so some ways. However I really feel just like the staff may be very, very calm and really clear in what’s the path to work in and never getting too affected by all the pieces that is occurring across the staff, and that’s extraordinarily necessary and that’s nice to see.”
Leclerc feels staff boss Vasseur (at left) has positioned Ferrari completely forward of Hamilton’s arrival.
Talking after driving the SF-25 for the primary time on the Fiorano check monitor on Wednesday, Leclerc says he anticipated the rise in scrutiny at Ferrari this 12 months nevertheless it isn’t having an influence on his or the staff’s preparations.
“I haven’t been shocked,” he stated. “I believe Ferrari has all the time had lots of consideration across the staff. And naturally, this 12 months, it’s even larger as a result of Lewis is becoming a member of the staff and he’s clearly a legend of the game, so it’s regular that there’s much more consideration than there usually is. However let’s say that the conventional normal is already fairly excessive.
“Now with Lewis, all the pieces is type of exploding and there’s clearly lots of protection and lots of requests and all of this. However it’s a part of the job and I believe the staff within the background is doing a extremely good job as a result of as a driver, it’s not like I can really feel it that a lot.
“I can clearly see the craziness. We’re in Fiorano — we drove the automotive and I can see the craziness across the monitor and that’s superb to see. I solely see the positives.”
You’ll be able to really feel the love and fervour by means of this video ❤️ pic.twitter.com/9yG3p3tPaE
— Scuderia Ferrari HP (@ScuderiaFerrari) February 20, 2025
Though Leclerc goes into his seventh season with Ferrari, he says the expertise and success of Hamilton supplies an instance for him to try to observe, and that he’s been making an attempt to know how his new teammate works.
“It’s all the time very attention-grabbing the primary few weeks with a brand new teammate, and particularly when your teammate is Lewis Hamilton,” he stated. “He’s achieved a lot; it’s tremendous attention-grabbing, and it’s tremendous cool for me to have the ability to analyze how he truly works day-to-day along with his engineers. What are the feedback that he makes, what are the issues that he places explicit consideration on, as a result of clearly it’s been a really profitable strategy — he’s probably the most profitable driver in System 1.
“So after all, I’ve been wanting and attempting to research and study as a lot as I can from Lewis in these first few weeks. It is vitally troublesome for now, as a result of we haven’t been with the identical automotive on the similar time on monitor… however I can see just a little little bit of the traits of his driving model, and it’s actually cool to see and analyze. So it went very well. We even have an excellent relationship and managed to spend fairly a little bit of time collectively, and we can’t wait to begin to race one another.”
