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charles leclerc, il predestinato
inspired by kaia encouraging me that it's okay to be wrong. a lot of the information here i've discussed with kaia or learned from her, so this post would not exist without her!
1. the tragedy of ferrari
scuderia ferrari are an italian legacy team with a long history in formula 1, having raced in every formula 1 championship since its inception in 1950, with 15 out of 73 world drivers' championships won. the tragedy is that despite this, having the resources and infrastructure to theoretically challenge for the top step every year, no driver has won the championship for them since 2007. the tragedy is that their car tends to be competitive they just make an unreasonable amount of race strategy blunders for a top team. or they get outdeveloped over the course of the season. or they put an illegal engine in their car... or they can't commit to prioritizing one driver over the other and end up losing to a rival team... or their top driver bins it at their home race and never mentally recovers... etc. the point of all this background is to say: there are a lot of ferrari fans in the world, and they're all used to being disappointed. ferrari snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, Next Year™ etc.
enter: charles leclerc, the chosen one (il predestinato).
2. who?
full name: charles marc hervé perceval leclerc
the monegasque/french pronunciation of his name sounds more like "charle lecler", "sharl" etc, though he may pronounce his own name the monegasque way or the english way depending on context and neither is wrong
birthday: october 16, 1997 (25 years old)
nationality: monégasque
fluent in french, italian and english
currently driving for the scuderia ferrari f1 team (4 seasons completed)
3. overcoming loss
this josh revell video is a useful summary of his time in feeder series, and this page on racefans. episode 8 of season 1 of drive to survive also covers charles' background and first season in formula 1. but up until then:
jules bianchi was charles's close family friend & godfather despite being only 7 years older than him. jules drove for the backmarker team marussia in 2013 & 2014 and his dream was to drive for ferrari, and he was seen as a future ferrari driver; unfortunately he died as a result of injuries sustained at the 2014 race in suzuka, in the last fatal incident in formula 1. motorsport is extremely expensive and charles' karting career would have ended if jules hadn't convinced his manager, nicolas todt to fund charles' career until he reached formula 1. ferrari was jules' dream and charles carries it on for him, too. charles joined the ferrari driver academy in 2016 and signed to the f1 team 2 years later.
charles' father, herve, raced in formula 3 and introduced charles to motorsport, supporting him throughout his junior career. his father had been ill for a long time when charles was in his formula 2 season in 2017 and so charles lied to him, saying he'd signed on to drive in f1 before he really had. charles winning the f1 world championship was herve's dream... four days after his father's death, charles won the f2 feature race at baku.
on the beyond the grid podcast in 2018 charles said:
“I think that when I first started racing, my weak point was my mental strength. I think I was quite weak mentally, very emotional, and that was not great for me. [...] But definitely there will never be any training to react better in a situation like losing a parent. I definitely became a lot stronger mentally, firstly thanks to that, but then there was also quite a big loss which was the one of Jules. That was extremely hard to take but then, because of this, the whole situation also made me stronger mentally. When my father passed away it was also extremely difficult but somehow with all the work I’ve done for racing especially, it has helped me also in a personal situation like this. If you asked me now what is your biggest quality it is probably my mental strength, which turned from a weakness into my biggest strength.”
in 2019, anthoine hubert, one of charles' friends and former rivals, passed away as a result of an accident during the spa f2 feature race. pierre gasly, another f1 driver, is one of charles' closest friends and is his closest friend out of the current drivers, having grown up together, their families knowing each other well.
"On the Saturday night, we all learned about Anthoine passing away and on the Sunday I remember speaking with Pierre. We were all good friends, with Esteban [Ocon] and Anthoine, we all grew up together and Pierre told me ‘you need to win for Anthoine on Sunday’."
charles won the f1 race that weekend - his first ever - and dedicated his win to anthoine.
4. he won in spa, he wins in monza!
after racing his rookie year at sauber in 2018, charles started racing for the ferrari f1 team in 2019, taking 7 pole positions and winning 2 races. the first race was spa 2019 as mentioned above; the second race was monza in italy - one of ferrari's home races and as such, one full of tifosi (ferrari fans) in the stands and one incredibly meaningful for charles to win for the team and incredibly fitting for 'the chosen one'. the most iconic commentary while he did so as well. charles is also fluent in italian and allegedly doesn't even really have much of an accent speaking it which made it even easier for italian fans to claim charles for themselves LOL. charles did very well against his teammate sebastian vettel that year, proving his talent as well as highlighting a loss in seb's performance. i'm not insane enough yet to talk about sebchal, try me in a few years.
in december 2019 he signed a 5 year contract, the longest in ferrari's history. longer than 4x wdc vettel got at the time of signing (3 years), longer than what even michael schumacher was offered, earlier than most drivers were in their careers when ferrari took them on. this shows how much hope ferrari have placed in him. this would leave him at the team until the end of the 2024 season, barring exit clauses. allegedly charles was in talks to extend that contract further (to the end of 2026) but i really hope he didn't sign that already lol.
the ferrari engine from the 2019 season was investigated for being potentially illegal and after changes to the regulations were made to account for whatever they were doing, the performance of the ferrari tanked in 2020 and they had their worst season since 1980, finishing sixth out of ten in the constructors' championship. 2021 was a recovery year but also marked the beginning of a new era - sebastian vettel's contract was not renewed and he was replaced with carlos sainz, who outscored charles that year but was not considered to be the better driver. he even got two poles this season despite the car not actually having the pace to compete for race wins - that's how good he is at qualifying. ♡
and so we reach 2022, the first year of a new set of major regulation changes.
5. the tragedy of ferrari part 2
(2022, dir. mattia binotto)Beautiful day! @/epistolarys · Jul 4
grow up idolizing brand your godfather and role model drove for > call them your only team > develop through their junior system and win everything there is to win for them > prove yourself as their number one driver despite doubts over your age and inexperience > be poised for your first championship and have the potential for the best season of your career in one of the best and fastest cars on the grid > be a ferrari driver > lose to max verstappen
grow up idolizing brand your godfather and role model drove for > call them your only team > develop through their junior system and win everything there is to win for them > prove yourself as their number one driver despite doubts over your age and inexperience > be poised for your first championship and have the potential for the best season of your career in one of the best and fastest cars on the grid > be a ferrari driver > lose to max verstappen
ferrari went into the season looking very competitive. charles won two of the first three races this year and after the third race he had a championship lead of 46 points. people thought he had the championship locked up. this was very deceptive due to max having unrepresentative car issues in two of those three races. to be more specific, charles won the first race (bahrain), max won the second (jeddah), charles won the third (australia), and then max won the fourth (imola). i remember thinking, i hope this pattern continues... and then, well, charles didn't win another race for three months (austria). AND AFTER THAT ONE, HE NEVER WON ANOTHER. for perspective, this season is 22 races long and despite charles' strong start, max went on to win 15 total races. the problem is not that their car is bad. well, it's not only that their car is bad. it's that their team culture is bad and they say things that make it sound like they have no drive for improvement.
here's a fun little summary of charles' season.
- BAHRAIN • P1 win after a healthy fight with max
- JEDDAH • P2 after a healthy fight with max
- AUSTRALIA • P1 grand slam weekend (win/pole/fastest lap/led every lap)
- IMOLA • P6 in the race, P2 in the sprint, which he'd led until the end despite max taking pole, until max overtook for the sprint win in the last laps. had been chasing checo for P2 during the race but spun, sending him down the order before he recovered to P6
- MIAMI • P2 after losing his pole advantage to max early in the race
- BARCELONA • DNF due to engine failure while comfortably leading the race from pole
- MONACO • P4 after getting pole on the hardest track to overtake in formula 1 due to ferrari tire strategy blunder during a wet race
- BAKU • DNF due to engine failure while temporarily leading the race
- MONTREAL • P5 after having started the race from the back of the grid due to engine penalties thanks to those dnfs lmaoooo
- SILVERSTONE • P4 after having been in the lead of the race, and then not stopping for tire change under the safety car, leaving others to overtake him on his old hard tires
- AUSTRIA • P1 after a healthy fight with max, despite his throttle pedal threatening to destroy his race in the last laps, in his first race win not from pole position. max had won the sprint as well, so it was still charles' first win without being P1 on the grid.
- FRANCE • DNF due to um binning it from the lead of the race. totally his fault but would he have screamed like that if ferrari hadn't lost him all those win opportunities earlier in the season? charles villain origin story.
- HUNGARY • P6 because after leading ferrari put him on the awful hard tire that had already looked awful on the alpine cars and he had to pit just to get rid of the tires.
- SPA • P6 after power unit penalties started him p15, although max literally won the race from p14 lol anyway he would have been p5 if ferrari hadn't pitted him for fastest lap, narrowly releasing him into alonso's path, him not getting the fastest lap after all, then getting a 5 second penalty for speeding in the pit lane by 0.1 km/h due to a visor tear-off damaging one of the car's sensors. actually here's charles' own summary of it: "P9 in Lap 1 then tear off in the brakes that causes front right brake overheating, have to stop to take off the tear off off the brakes, come back to P5, took a 5 seconds penalty for being too quick in pit lane because of a burnt sensor caused by the first issue. Beautiful day!"
- ZANDVOORT • P3 stolen from lewis after a late safety car when max and mercedes were doing well
- MONZA • P2 after struggling to catch max on new softs, though the race ended under safety car
- SINGAPORE • P2 after losing his pole advantage to checo with a bad start in wet conditions, and never being able to catch back up before his tires dropped off on a hard track to overtake at
- SUZUKA • P3 after a late-race fight against checo that gave him a penalty trying to defend
- UNITED STATES • P3 after starting P12 for penalties but gaining time during an opportune safety car pit stop
- MEXICO • P6 since ferrari were nowhere this weekend due to high altitude conditions
- INTERLAGOS • P4 - charles qualified P10 due to ferrari leaving him on inters as a gamble during a potentially wet Q3 but recovered to P6 during the sprint race and started the race P5 - he then got spun out by lando, dropped to 18th but recovered to P4
- ABU DHABI • P2 after qualifying behind both red bulls, pulling off a flawless one-stop race to defend against two-stopping checo
interestingly ferrari actually did seem to get better at strategy in the second half of the season but at that point red bull had outdeveloped them and the car performance was probably greatly compromised by the mid-season technical directive as well. performance has to be compared to expectations based on the track characteristics relative to the car's strengths, and i have to say ferrari being able to adapt their car setup in abu dhabi, and charles being able to adapt his driving style, and maintaining the right strategy to take p2 from checo despite the strength of the rb on that track ended up kind of impressive. the wool is really being pulled over my eyes huh...
the other problem is that when ferrari were fucking up the worst people were like why is charles not standing up for himself and just letting ferrari ruin his races like that. when he's the better driver. tbf carlos was a lot better at this (overruling team decisions) over the course of the season ("stop inventing" is my personal favorite) but the toxic charleclerc stan in me was like carlos ended up taking away positions from charles by doing so like in monaco, so i don't necessarily know that charles doing the same would have actually been better for him and the team. but let's just hope ferrari actually get it together next year and this isn't a problem.
but charlos is actually really cute. they are rivals and they're not best friends like piarles but look at how cute they are.
✧ @/likewaterising · Jul 6
honestly i don't think i would like charles this much if he was winning the championship. i did like him as early as jeddah this year which is when he was winning but coincidentally i didn't get invested in watching f1 until imola where he made his first big mistake
like frrr fcking up his career only makes me more invested even though i desperately want him to win all the time. maybe i will find his personality insufferable if he is winning for real or maybe i just like the entire f1 fandom feeling sorry for him
honestly i don't think i would like charles this much if he was winning the championship. i did like him as early as jeddah this year which is when he was winning but coincidentally i didn't get invested in watching f1 until imola where he made his first big mistake
like frrr fcking up his career only makes me more invested even though i desperately want him to win all the time. maybe i will find his personality insufferable if he is winning for real or maybe i just like the entire f1 fandom feeling sorry for him
this is my favorite meme from this season - numbers being points difference relative to 2nd if he's 1st in the championship (positive) and 1st if he's anywhere below (negative) during the post race interviews.... I MISS HIS SMILE...
source
6. but here's the thing
charles isn't a perfect driver. in imola he was so desperate to take 2nd place, pushing to overtake checo, that he spun and ended up in 6th, which was his first Big Mistake of the season - arguably his first season as a real contender for the wdc. but in france he was leading the race and crashed even though he wasn't under pressure lol. it's absolutely his worst mistake but...
but it's easy to blame everything on the team. basically ferrari has fucked up so much that even charles' mistakes can be attributed to them. if he hadn't been so desperate to make up for his own team's errors would he have had to push that hard etc.... and ferrari fans are SO USED to blaming everything on the team. they say sebastian vettel aged 30 years during his 5 years at ferrari, during which his goal was to win the championship with ferrari (after having won 4 with red bull previously), but they failed despite at least 2 initially competitive seasons.
charles has a bit of a humility or a reality check to him that is good but not necessarily right for championship mentality. after his crash in france he said, "but it’s my fault and if I keep doing mistakes like this then I deserve not to win the championship. I’m losing too many points, I think seven in Imola, 25 here because honestly we were the strongest car on track today, so yes, if we lose the championship by 32 points at the end of the season, I will know from where they are coming from." this is in contrast to other drivers who often have the mentality of "this crash was not my fault", blaming other people or not admitting to their own mistakes etc, which makes charles so likable and pitiable. but is that the reason he isn't a championship winner?
in the end of course, charles has lost the championship by way more than 32 points for factors outside his control, so you know it's not. but the fear is that if ferrari actually steps it up he's still going to lose to max.
risa @/haengseol · Oct 15
i think that being a charles fan is great because instead of feeling bad about your own life you can feel sad about your pitiful fan favorite driver always falling just short of the top step, which ultimately doesn't really matter!
i think that being a charles fan is great because instead of feeling bad about your own life you can feel sad about your pitiful fan favorite driver always falling just short of the top step, which ultimately doesn't really matter!
anyway..... Next Year.
7. just charles things
i just think charles is likeable because he's very polite and not controversial (which does not make him perfect either). he's also extremely handsome - hello pop star of formula 1. walter koster is a legend btw. even alex thinks so. and he's so... kind of brutally honest with himself in a way a lot of f1 drivers aren't, you see a lot who are very confident and think they can never do wrong and then charles is kind of like, depressed in every post-race where he made a mistake and fully admits to it. you literally can't help but feel sad for him. this reddit comment really really sums it up for me.
charles has just had a lot of bad luck in his life/a lot of things not go his way but still does well despite it or because of it, which is admirable either way. another thing is that in f1 every driver dreams of winning their home race - for charles that is monaco - and here's his track record there. again monaco is a track which is very difficult to overtake on, so qualifying position is extremely valuable there.
2017 F2: retired in both the feature race and sprint race due to suspension failure and electrical issues
2018 F1: started P14, had to retire from the race due to brake failure
2019 F1: started P15 without making it out of Q1 due to track improvements, then retired due to a puncture from an overtake attempt
2020 F1: no race due to covid
2021 F1: qualifies on pole, crashes during Q3, doesn't start the race because of a gearbox issue that wasn't fixed overnight
2022 F1: qualifies on pole, loses position due to ferrari pit strategy and drops to P4
so like finally he actually finished a race at monaco but was it worth it....
due to lack of money charles' younger brother arthur had to stop karting so the family could focus on charles' career - after charles started finding success i think arthur got back into racing but has been greatly disadvantaged by his hiatus, so now people think he's bad, which he probably is, it's just that it's impossible to tell if he's innately worse than his brother or if his potential was cut that severely.
charles has been dating charlotte sine since the end of 2019 and they're very cute.. charlotte is also from monaco. but the only thing is that charles used to date giada gianni (italian) who was friends with charlotte... and they were dating for over 4 years. then giada announces that charles broke up with her "to focus on ferrari" and then right after that charles and charlotte start publicly dating. So.
it's like if i was a charles fan back then i probably would be mad omg because he and giada looked so cute too, and it sounds like she was close with his family etc. but life is like that....... and people will always spread rumors to make other people look bad.
also it's worth mentioning that i think he tries to remain apolitical - not kneeling during the 2020 austrian gp weekend but then when queen elizabeth died he wore an armband for that / stood up for lewis during the whole piquet controversy but i think those were easy things to do/"statements to make" that didn't risk alienating his sponsors and fanbase. i think it's much easier to be a fan of someone who isn't upfront about their conservative views compared to someone who shows them so i know why celebrities do that. i admire lewis and seb so much for the way that they do stand up for what they believe in, i know people think they virtue signal but i think those people are looking for excuses to not listen to them. social progress is about growth and change not about being right from day 1. i hope that other drivers grow into those roles as well but only if it's genuine. so anyway i don't use charles as a moral guidepost. f1 is full of tax evaders anyway
misc endearing moments
- i am stupid
- coughing on his own water
- peak covid banana suit twitch streaming
- charlotte crashing out seb in the game & subbing to charles on twitch to get him to open the door
- doesn't know his own height
- doesn't know a thing actually though hilariously he actually studies for the 2022 game
source
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not sure where i got this from (either beyond the grid or twt who knows) but someone said that ferrari has such a different team culture compared to merc and rbr (both based in the uk) because of the way italians operate in the workplace -- they tend to be a lot more brash and emotional compared to brits and so everyone has to navigate this additional layer of sociopolitics in an already high pressure environment, which can prevent employees from wanting to rock the boat too much since they have to defer to like. italian hierarchies and social structures and whatnot. idk how much truth there is to this but i think it's worth considering since team dynamics definitely play into morale and the strategists' willingness to take risks if they know they might be yelled for it after.
i wonder how much filial gratitude he has left for ferrari after this season...it's so sad because ferrari obviously means a lot to him bc of his dad and jules associations and i think he'll take not winning a wdc with them as a personal failure (and at a much deeper level than seb, who also talked about this in btg). ferrari has him on an emotional leash and they know it!!!! he needs to contact nmixx lily immediately so they can trade tips on how to defy emotional manipulation.
i'm so happy that you've written the perfect charles primer <3 also that last gif is giving this (sorry)
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thank you for the kind words it means a lot to me!!
+HELP WHY WOULD U SAY THIS TO ME. WHY
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lily lore is just me realizing that they’re both slayers who have a debilitating emotional attachment to their companies (lily was marketed as a prominent trainee even though they stuck her in the dungeon indefinitely so she probably inhaled the hopium and never jumped ship for 7 years)
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hi risa i hope you know i love your summative content more than anything in the world ;__; <3 apologies for late reply but i really am obsessed with how well-organized and presented this is and i Know you put your heart and soul into selecting those 6 opening images! you've worked hard.
i must say sharl pole conversion rate is perhaps one of the funniest stats in the entire sport. i'm sorry because i know i'm unnecessarily harsh to him at times but as i said i don't think his current position is indicative of his full capabilities within a team environment, tbf to him it was his first year glimpsing at contention so i don't actually hold that against him. also i do enjoy charlos base relationship which makes the absolute vitriolic discourse constantly instigated by their respective girlies even more hilarious. and then even the ones who like them together can't live in peace because there's always a toxic carlando fan lurking in the background ready to assert that carlos will always like lando more 😭 and i love that for everyone!!!
"so now people think he's bad, which he probably is" you're killing me. it's true tho. but yeah sharl's agonies are i suppose interesting because despite how deeply entrenched his tragedies are in his psyche his actual narrative is quite transparent and straightforward and like, lacking of a certain emotional complexity, or should i say is at least easily understood, which makes his bleeding heart devotion easy for people to acknowledge and root for and pity. like quite frankly his life is great and at the end of the day he's a normie athlete who cheats on his gf and tax evades like everyone else and he doesn't even obfuscate psychologically on insane levels like some people do, but it's fun that sometimes he hates himself! and i think he should do it more for us
anyway thank u for a most fun and engaging post <3 ferrari team culture is truly so fascinating.... mostly i want to see how the politics shake out if the vasseur overhaul happens
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you're so right LOL i spent a long time finding good images and then painstakingly cropping them individually. this is why i followed so many charles fans on tumblr in the process of writing this post
i think it is really funny bc i always thought charles and carlos got along really well (in a coworkers way) but all this ferrari tp talk is very much a charles' group vs carlos' group war brewing and from what i've read about max vs carlos i don't like that...
i really respect u for how much you have contributed to my understanding of charles' psyche despite not actually being a fan of him. he really is like public friendly in the hero archetype way... easy to feel sorry for in a basic enough way for people to Get It but complex enough for people to keep interest in it. i love that for me. thank u for your encouragement ! ! ! ! i'm very glad i wrote this post but i really dont know if i would have if you hadn't said what you did to me and end of season was the best time to do it while everything was still fresh in my mind... and doing half of it before the final race was better because i was still afraid he was going to lose p2 LOL
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the way I follow f1 is much more as a sport than as a like...a fandom? so I don't really know all the ancillary stuff about drivers, I don't watch the little youtube videos and fun things they've started doing recently haha. so I loved reading this summary of charles as a person from a more rpf-ish perspective, understanding what he's like and how he ticks etc etc! he seems so likeable and of course has been through so much tragedy in his life and yet remains to my untrained eye really positive - almost like it's a really conscious thing from him. anw he seems sweet and I'm glad he has so many fans and I hope his career goes well even though I do not like ferrari... I look forward to hearing more abt him next season :)
(not saying who my current fave driver on the grid is but you might be able to guess hehe)
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and it is very cool that you've been into f1 for such a long time, i never thought it would appeal to me until it did and i'm very glad! i think the heavy social media presence really helps keep engagement in the sport/the drivers even when there's no racing and as someone who's into very few sports i'm thankful for it.
who's your fav driver now? seeing as seb is out :_(