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While confident he made the most of what Ferrari gave him this year, Leclerc hopes for a lot more from 2026

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This was a Formula 1 season that went down to the wire between three drivers from two different teams. For much of it, though, it appeared to be a two-horse race between the McLaren pair, with Max Verstappen’s late charge adding spice to the situation.

Go back 12 months, and you’d likely have been surprised at the absence of Ferrari from that picture, given just how strongly the Scuderia finished last season. The team fell just 14 points short of the constructors’ championship against McLaren at the final round, while Charles Leclerc was only 18 points behind now-champion Lando Norris – a gap that was eight points before Abu Dhabi, when Norris had been seen as Verstappen’s biggest threat.

Ferrari and Leclerc had finished so strongly that it was actually the Monaco native who scored the most points after the 2024 summer break, outscoring Norris by four points and Verstappen by 19. To then end 2025 without a single victory, and 181 points behind Norris in the standings, was not on Leclerc’s radar.

“It’s not been easy for sure, because you start the year with expectations,” Leclerc told RACER. “We ended up the second half of the season as the one that had more points. So, you look forward to the next year, hoping to continue on that momentum.

“But McLaren did an incredible job in that winter break and came back with a big advantage on others, a lot bigger than what we had expected. Then Red Bull kind of stepped up to their level, and Mercedes and ourselves are kind of a little bit inconsistent and struggling to find our way with this generation of cars, at least as well as McLaren and Red Bull.

“So, it’s been a tough season, but I think my objective in every season I go into is trying to maximize whatever I have. That doesn’t mean I’m satisfied with the season, in a way that fighting for fourth, fifth or sixth is not something that I particularly enjoy. But looking back, I think it’s been a very strong season on my side. And for that, I need to be happy about it – still being extremely critical with myself and always trying to find ways to improve, but it’s been a strong season on my side.”

A season of maximizing gains for minimal benefits can’t have been made easier by complaints from management about its drivers complaining too much. Clive Rose/Getty Images

After the Sao Paulo Grand Prix – where both Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton retired from the race – the two drivers were told to talk less and focus on driving by Ferrari chairman John Elkann. They were comments that you would imagine will have stung Leclerc given his previously strong form in an uncompetitive car – scoring back-to-back podiums prior to Brazil – but he didn’t show it.

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Instead, Leclerc said he would try to do better, as all the team would. That’s not to say the 28-year-old believes he has glaring areas to improve on, but that he can still develop further, even if the machinery hasn’t always allowed him to show his true performance potential.

“I remember in 2019, I arrived in the team and there were bigger areas of weaknesses,” he said. “One was tire management, for example, and I put a lot of effort into it. That’s where experience helps you, just because you know a lot more situations, you know how to adapt to them much better. And as a driver, I felt a lot more complete.

“So now it’s not that I wouldn’t say there’s something huge that I still need to improve; it’s fine-tuning here and there, trying to improve the way I work with my engineer, the way you’re going to approach a slightly lower-grip corner. But these are just fine details and it’s a continuous improvement, really.

“It’s not that something is not going well, so you are changing it. You’re just trying to push more in the right direction, because nobody is resting in this paddock and everybody is pushing flat out to become better.”

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And speaking of the machinery, for eight-time winner Leclerc it appears that is all that is lacking. Blisteringly quick over one lap and capable of big results whenever the car allows, the only question mark is how he would handle the pressure of a season-long battle for the title.

While he stops short of saying the car is the only thing missing, Leclerc says the pain of not being in the championship mix is being used to fuel his work through tough years like 2025.

“It would be a very arrogant thing for me to say [I just need the car to win a title] and I’m not this kind of person. But I feel definitely that I’m doing a really, really good job, and surely with a better car, it would give me better chances in order to fight up there,” he mused. “At the moment, we don’t have that as a team and that is frustrating, but also motivating in one way to turn that situation around that’s been there for many years. And that’s where I draw my motivation from.

“But if the question is ‘Do I feel capable of winning a world championship?’ I do. And I work towards that every single day and I hope that day will come as soon as possible.”

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The first opportunity for that day to come is next season, with the major change of regulations that could reset the competitive picture. Despite mid-season talk of a strong Mercedes power unit, Leclerc is not downbeat on Ferrari’s chances, although also admits he has been burned by the way the past year has gone and won’t allow his expectations to get too high after the unpleasant surprise of the pecking order this season.

“As a team, there are always areas that you need to improve and Formula 1 is consistently evolving. Everybody’s pushing their own limits and finding new ways, new clever ways, of approaching some limitations that you had two or three months ago. Sometimes we are ahead of the others on some things and sometimes we are behind, and you’ve got to look around you and try to improve. So it’s a constant improvement.

“How do I feel about next year? It’s a very difficult one because we are all starting from scratch. It’s a very big secret how everybody is going next year. Even with drivers, it’s very difficult to speak about those kind of things because we never really run in the same situations on simulators, etc. and we keep things for ourselves. So it’s very difficult to have a clear picture on where is everyone at for next year.

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“One thing for sure is that I feel we’re working well. But to tell you a feeling is a very tricky thing to do because even from last year to this year, you kind of have a feeling, you think it’s going in the right direction but then you come into a year where the regulations didn’t really change that much and McLaren managed to find a huge amount of performance and surprised everybody.

“Next year we are speaking about a change that probably never really happened, at least recently, in Formula 1 history. There’s the engine, there’s the whole philosophy of the way the car works. Everything around that is going to change.

“So, that gives a lot of opportunities to the team to find solutions. If one of the teams puts everything together, it can create a massive difference. I hope that team is Ferrari.”