Every time Ferrari and Charles Leclerc agree to extend their relationship in Formula 1, the news comes against a background of allusions to other suitors Charles has spurned to remain with his true love.
“For that, I’m also lucky to be in the position where I’ve got my manager,” he said on a recent episode of F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast when asked how seriously he had considered a life away from Ferrari.
“And my manager is here to let me know about what are the other opportunities, what’s going on around. And so I didn’t have any personal talks, but my manager did.
“I mean, it’s his job to be honest with me and to give me the full picture of what’s going on in the paddock and what opportunities we might have. So, yes, there were other opportunities. But at the end of the day, we sat down with Ferrari and we made it happen quite quickly.”
If Leclerc has a special relationship with Ferrari, the same can be said of his manager, Nicolas Todt: son of Jean, the former rally co-driver who masterminded Peugeot’s rally and endurance programmes before leading Ferrari to world domination in the Michael Schumacher era, then shifted into politics as FIA president for over a decade. Todt Jr also managed long-time Ferrari driver Felipe Massa and still superintends the affairs of James Calado, a Le Mans winner with the Scuderia. He has a great many drivers on his books at all stages of the career ladder, and is a consummate player in the paddock.
But what Todt Jr enjoys to a greater extent at Ferrari than anywhere else is the ear of influential figures further up the food chain than the team principal – although he is a key ally of Fred Vasseur, having co-founded the ART GP organisation with him over two decades ago. Indeed, it’s understood that Todt was instrumental in the removal of former team principal Mattia Binotto and his replacement by Vasseur in January 2023.
Nicolas Todt and Fred Vasseur
Photo by: Getty Images
Having a manager so plugged into the senior echelons of power enables Leclerc to get what he wants with plausible deniability, such as Binotto’s departure at a time when Ferrari’s recovery trajectory underwent a major wobble, and the peculiarly communicated removal of Xavier Marcos as Leclerc’s race engineer early in the 2024 season. He would not have quite the same influence if he were to shift to another team.
Equally, his influence depends not just on his performance but also his market value. If Ferrari has Leclerc locked into a contractual “golden prison”, as our Italian colleague Roberto Chinchero puts it, then threatening to go elsewhere is no longer a lever he can pull.
Nobody doubts Leclerc’s speed or commitment. Arguably he often over-commits, especially if the car isn’t good enough. If the Ferrari is only 90% or 95% as good as the frontrunning car, Charles will try to make up the shortfall himself in the form of risk. That’s why the Tifosi place him in the same rarefied space in their hearts as Gilles Villeneuve.
In recent seasons Leclerc’s prime options outside Ferrari have been with Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren, whose leaders have had to weigh up the performance benefits Leclerc would bring against the change in equilibrium it would cause. Nicolas Todt has certainly been busy doing the rounds of those teams over the past couple of years, but there is a tendency in the F1 media to get rather too excited when a driver’s manager is spotted in another team’s motorhome.
Sometimes a casual chat is just a casual chat. Sometimes a deal may actually be in progress, though the likelihood of this happening in plain sight is quite low. Often such encounters are staged in public purely to suit each party’s agendas: for the team principal, to show their drivers they have other options on the table; for the manager, to show his client has interest from elsewhere.
To manage the internal equilibrium when it announced in January 2024 that Lewis Hamilton would be joining the following season, Ferrari also signed Leclerc to a long-term deal that theoretically reached until the end of 2029 with options, but which was also understood to have included a break point in 2026. On Leclerc’s side this was to cover the possibility of Ferrari making a mess of the new technical regulations.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton
Photo by: Getty Images
Instead, a more complex picture has emerged in which Ferrari has engineered a competitive car, and has been able to add performance to it in the form of upgrades – which hasn’t always been true in the recent past. But it has also suffered operational misfires and blown several chances to score more points.
The dynamic in the other leading teams has also changed, though. When Leclerc signed up for the long term in 2024, this was partially because Todt knew Hamilton’s move was coming, and had approached Mercedes with a view to Charles filling that vacancy. But when the break clause came into view early this season, Mercedes was perfectly happy with its line-up. The same could be said of McLaren, where Todt is also understood to have held discussions on and off with leaders including Andrea Stella and Zak Brown. When Todt was doing the rounds late last season, McLaren had two drivers in contention for the world championship.
It’s also understood that Aston Martin made an approach at the end of last year, but this was at a time of yet more underperformance and internal wrangling in that benighted organisation, when recently installed managing technical partner Adrian Newey had MD and team principal Andy Cowell ousted. Given a choice between Ferrari and a farrago, Leclerc wisely chose door number one.
“I don’t want to give up on my ultimate goal, which is to become a world champion with Ferrari,” Leclerc said.
“And I believe in the project. I believe in every single person of the team. I think we are in a year where we’ve been showing innovation. We are very aggressive also in the production plan and in the upgrades we are bringing and that gives me lots of hopes for the future.
“Fred is a big reason on why I have signed again as well. I believe in Fred 200%.”
Next time his contract is up for renewal, Leclerc will be over 30. Will he still have as many other opportunities then?
We want to hear from you!
Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.
Take our survey
– The Autosport.com Team
Read the full article here