Charles Leclerc is wasting his career at Ferrari

Charles Leclerc secured a podium for Ferrari at the F1 Belgian in a car that was essentially the 3rd fastest on that day. The driver nailed the qualifying lap that helped him get the better of Max Verstappen for the grid slot. This was followed by some impressive defense he displayed early in the race to help keep Max Verstappen behind him when the conditions were wet.

However, there must have been a moment when Charles Leclerc sat in the cooldown room and realized that the two drivers sitting next to him now have the same number of career wins as he does. The fact that the driver has been in the sport for longer and driven for the most successful team in the sport since 2019 should have been a reality check.

A reality where the Ferrari dream has been a complete disaster, and it is time for him to make a move away from the Italian team. Charles Leclerc is wasting his career at Ferrari, here's why!

He's been at Ferrari for too long

At what point does Charles Leclerc give up on the Ferrari dream? The driver joined the team in 2019, and by 2020, he was the team leader. What 2022 showed was that the driver can contest for the title even against Max Verstappen, provided he has the car and the team behind him to get the job done.

We're in 2025 now! During this time, Charles Leclerc has seen multiple regimes and multiple bosses. The unfortunate thing is that the more the things change, the more they remain the same with Ferrari.

We can take a look at the last 7 as well, where this team has a drop in performance, then it starts rebuilding, then it gets close to the top, and then finally it falls away yet again. That has been the reality of Ferrari, and even in 2025, that trend has stuck.

No driver should give seven years to a team and not have a single title campaign to talk about. This is a realization Charles Leclerc should have had by now, and one can only hope that it is there in 2026.

The team is not showing improvement

When we talk about Ferrari, one of the major issues with the team has been identified for a while now, and it is the fact that this team more often than not suffers from too much board interference. The board would let the team rebuild, let the pieces fall in place to a certain extent, and then, when it is getting closer to the top, it starts interfering.

2025 is arguably the best example of it. Ferrari with Charles Leclerc almost won the constructors' championship last season. The car was strong enough to achieve it.

For 2025, there were aspirations of a title challenge. Unfortunately for Ferrari, the call made by Charles Leclerc's current boss to change 99% of the car backfired big time.

Ideally, mistakes shouldn't happen, but this was one from Fred Vasseur. As soon as the high expectations were not met, there were rumors of Ferrari senior management looking to get rid of the Frenchman.

It is still acting like a team that doesn't want to work on the principles that in F1, everything takes time, and it is a long-term process. While there are reports that the sword hanging over Vasseur's head is gone for now, what happens if we head to the 2026 regulations, and the power unit is nowhere?

What happens then? The reality is that for the entire duration of Charles Leclerc's stay at Ferrari, the team has been run with far too much influence from the board, and we can go back 4 to 5 decades in F1 to see why such a thing doesn't work.

Signing Lewis Hamilton was the first sign of the team not valuing Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc is quite easily one of the top 3 talents in F1 right now, and the last few years have been a testament to that. He has performed well in different conditions, and considering how much of a melting pot for chaos Ferrari can be, he has overcome that and performed at a sensational level. Despite that, Ferrari has not made a call to morph the team around its leader. The cars built by the team are not the representations of something that suits Charles Leclerc.

On the contrary, it has been the opposite. Bringing in a Lewis Hamilton as a megastar should ideally be the last nail in the coffin because it shows that the team felt it was important to have someone in the team of such a high profile, even if a Charles Leclerc drives one of the cars.

If you want to win championships, there are two paths. One of them is building a team around you, and the other is ending up in the fastest car.

Either Charles Leclerc is not willing to pull his weight around at Ferrari, or the team is not willing to put all its eggs in his basket. Either way, it does appear that the value that should be put in a driver like Leclerc is not there at the moment, and if, after 7 years, it is not the case, then it will never be.

Conclusion

Charles Leclerc is a brilliant talent who continues to get undersold because of the team he's been a part of. As he sees drivers like Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri start eclipsing him in terms of career wins, it is about time that the driver starts looking at a future beyond the Italian team.

The first step is realising that the dream of a title has been given for close to a decade. At the start of the 2026 F1 season, if the Italian team is not where it needs to be, which is close to the top, that has to be the perfect time for Leclerc to call time on his current stint with the team and look for a future elsewhere.

Edited by Charanjot Singh Kohli