Title front-runner: Charles Leclerc celebrates his second win of the new Formula One season in Melbourne
(Picture: Getty Images)As Charles Leclerc emerged victorious from Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, it seemed as if virtually every member of the Ferrari team on the ground in Melbourne wanted their moment with him.
The 24-year-old appears to have galvanised the team in a way not seen since Michael Schumacher’s heyday, and in a manner never quite achieved by Fernando Alonso and, more recently, Sebastian Vettel.
At Albert Park, the story of the season rapidly switched from a head-to-head between Leclerc and Max Verstappen to simply Leclerc being the standalone dominant force.
Ferrari fans have seen too many false dawns to get too carried away, and the Monegasque was quick to point out this was just three grands prix into a marathon 23-race season.
But his margin of victory was 20sec and, even before Verstappen’s retirement, the Dutchman could not get close to a car that was not expected to be the quickest in Melbourne.
Leclerc has long been talked about as a future world champion, but only now does he have the machinery to make that a possibility.
He had already turned heads on his debut season in the sport with Sauber, and even more so a year on, in 2019, when he won the Belgian Grand Prix, followed in quick succession by Ferrari’s home race at Monza at the next race weekend. Since then, the adulation from the Ferrari fans has been complete.
There was the nadir of 2020 to contend with, when Ferrari had a pig of a car, followed by the pain of watching Mercedes and Red Bull battling it out last season. For a team who have so often misjudged their car in recent years, they look to have got everything right this time.
Unlike the Mercedes, the F1-75 is super-quick and, unlike the Red Bull, it is reliable. It also seems to have an adaptability from one track to another, be it a night race in the Middle East or the reconfigured Albert Park last weekend.
In the past, Leclerc had been prone to the odd accident of his own doing. Those close to him had argued it was merely because of his attempts to push a car that simply was not good enough.
With an apparent championship-winning car, he has not put a foot wrong, racing hard but fair in his tussles with defending world champion Verstappen.
All the indicators were that he would come good, having spent a season each in GP3 and Formula Two, winning both world titles, which is not a feat achieved by many.
There have been hardships along the way: the death of his godfather and mentor, Jules Bianchi, nine months after his crash at the Japanese Grand Prix in October 2014, and his father’s passing in 2017, just days before he would go on to win the F2 in Baku.
Speaking of those tragedies in an interview last season, he said: “There have been moments that I wish never happened, but they made me grow as a driver and helped me. The loss of my father and Jules, two incredibly hard moments in my life that made me stronger as a person and a driver. Mentally, I am stronger than I used to be.”
It has, understandably, made the setbacks behind the wheel easier to take. In 2022, there have been none, with two race wins and a sizeable championship lead (34 points) to take to the next race, the Emilia Romagna, in two weekends’ time on Ferrari’s doorstep at Imola.
For a team and nation starved of a world champion since Kimi Raikkonen in 2007, the expectation is already huge.
When asked in Australia about what to expect, Leclerc said simply: “Italy will be incredible. We need to approach the race weekend like the first three weekends, not put ourselves under extra pressure and overdo things.”
Ferrari have had a propensity to fall apart under pressure or miss out in the developmental race. For now, they are the clear frontrunners, with a clear leader in Leclerc.
