Charles Leclerc says he will only leave Ferrari once he doesn’t “believe in the project anymore”.
Since being promoted to Ferrari just one year into his Formula 1 career in 2019, Leclerc has only amassed five race victories, despite notching 21 pole positions in red.
Although two of those wins arrived during the opening three races of last year, Ferrari have slumped to third in the Constructors’ Championship this term, a seismic 338 points behind World Champions Red Bull.
Subsequently, speculation has continued to build over Leclerc’s future, with his current Ferrari contract expiring at the end of 2024.
However, speaking to TheRace, Leclerc has reiterated his deepened passion for the Italian marque, explaining why it simply goes beyond supporting the red cars growing up.
“It’s always been the red car for me, since I was younger,” he stated.
“But this is not the whole reason why I am so attached to Ferrari. I am also super grateful for everything they’ve done for me.
“I’m also aware that Nicolas Todt [manager] helped me from 2011, but without Ferrari, I wouldn’t have made it to Formula 1. And they’ve always been there supporting me when I needed it.
“Ferrari is just special. Whenever you get to Ferrari, and you go around the factory and you speak to the people, you can feel something that is super special, you can understand how much passion and how much it means to them.
“When you go to the production, and you see how much it means for them to see the driver. It’s something very strong.”
Ferrari’s failure to build upon a promising start to the latest technical era has derived from encountering a multitude of issues with its capriciously performing SF-23 car.
Both Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz have expressed throughout the year their troubles with managing the unpredictability provided by Ferrari’s 2023 charger.
Expanding on the Maranello squad’s ongoing challenge to get on top of its latest F1 creation, Leclerc said: “We straight away knew what our weaknesses were.
“We were, at least at the beginning of the year, super wind-sensitive, which is something I guess is quite difficult to understand for fans that are not properly into Formula 1.
“There were some off-examples like Baku, where the wind was quite high, but we were super strong [Leclerc converted pole position into a podium], which was difficult to understand.
“But then as a general trend, we were struggling quite a lot. Even in one weekend, we could see a lot of very good sessions and also very difficult sessions.
“That was very, very difficult for us because also as a driver, it’s very difficult to set up the car in a particular way, because you will get one car one session and a very different one the one after.”
Despite Ferrari’s shortcomings, Leclerc insists that his trust in the project has never been greater, particularly since Frederic Vasseur’s arrival as team boss last winter.
“I view it in a way that whenever I won’t believe in the project anymore, that probably will be the time when I’ll have to go away,” Leclerc admitted.
“Because it’s in these kinds of situations that you don’t get the best out of yourself, that you don’t help the team as much as it needs to be helped.
“But this is definitely not the case at the moment. I believe in the project as much as I’ve ever believed in the project before. Especially since Fred arrived.
“So for now it’s clear. Then it’s also clear that I want to win. But I believe in this project and I’m sure we are working in the right direction.”
