Charles Leclerc believes Lewis Hamilton is becoming a member of Ferrari on the good time due to the place the workforce is in its journey in the direction of profitable a Components 1 world championship.
Ferrari completed a detailed second to McLaren in final yr’s constructors’ championship, whereas Leclerc himself scored essentially the most factors of any driver after final yr’s summer time 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 workforce principal Fred Vasseur has acquired the Scuderia working.
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Hamilton and Leclerc take to the observe in Ferrari’s new SF-25
The RACER Mailbag, February 19
“I believe Lewis is coming into the workforce on the proper time,” Leclerc mentioned. “I believe Fred is a man that has a really massive power of holding the emotional stage of the workforce 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 workforce has been a giant increase and has been wonderful in so some ways. However I really feel just like the workforce could be very, very calm and really clear in what’s the route to work in and never getting too affected by every thing that is happening across the workforce, and that’s extraordinarily vital and that’s nice to see.”
Leclerc feels workforce 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 observe on Wednesday, Leclerc says he anticipated the rise in scrutiny at Ferrari this yr nevertheless it isn’t having an affect on his or the workforce’s preparations.
“I haven’t been stunned,” he mentioned. “I believe Ferrari has at all times had a number of consideration across the workforce. And naturally, this yr, it’s even greater as a result of Lewis is becoming a member of the workforce 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, every thing is type of exploding and there’s clearly a number of protection and a number of requests and all of this. But it surely’s a part of the job and I believe the workforce within the background is doing a very 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 observe and that’s wonderful to see. I solely see the positives.”
You may 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 offers an instance for him to attempt to observe, and that he’s been making an attempt to grasp how his new teammate works.
“It’s at all times very attention-grabbing the primary few weeks with a brand new teammate, and particularly when your teammate is Lewis Hamilton,” he mentioned. “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 essentially the most profitable driver in Components 1.
“So in fact, I’ve been wanting and attempting to investigate and study as a lot as I can from Lewis in these first few weeks. It is rather troublesome for now, as a result of we haven’t been with the identical automotive on the identical time on observe… however I can see a bit little bit of the traits of his driving type, and it’s actually cool to see and analyze. So it went rather well. We even have an excellent relationship and managed to spend fairly a little bit of time collectively, and we can not wait to begin to race one another.”
