A surprise new destination has emerged for Charles Leclerc with the Formula 1 star potentially "desperate" to start anew away from Ferrari.
The Monegasque finished second to Max Verstappen last year as his most likely challenger. He made a decent fist of it in the first half of the season, until his and Ferrari's title challenges collapsed.
He and his team would have expected to be the main rivals to Verstappen and Red Bull again this year. However, they have only been fourth quickest in reality with talk of titles only fantasy in their current situation.
Leclerc has been able to demonstrate decent pace over one lap, such as in Azerbaijan where he took pole position for both the Sprint and the main event. But the SF-23 has been woefully lacking in race pace, one of its major problems being exceedingly high tyre degradation.
Those problems have led to speculation Leclerc might be ready to walk away. The 25-year-old's current contract expires at the end of next year and he has been visibly frustrated with his situation in recent weeks.
Leclerc was heavily linked with Mercedes, but Lewis Hamilton is set to sign a contract extension which will prevent such a move. And the Monegasque has insisted that reports he has spoken with the Silver Arrows are untrue.
Long-standing F1 journalist Peter Windsor, who was also once a manager of Ferrari's now-defunct UK base, thinks Leclerc might consider joining an up-and-coming team like Alpine if he is serious about a fresh start.
"The big figure there is Charles Leclerc. Without any doubt at all, the guy will be unbelievably frustrated and very annoyed," he said in a live stream on his YouTube channel. "And he'll be wanting either Ferrari to magically get their act together and the car to be really quick, or he'll be thinking [about leaving].
"He may even be thinking, 'Alpine might be better than this lot in terms of my driving and doing what I know I can do. Look at them – top 10 every Q3 now'. He might be thinking like that. He might be that desperate.
"I'm not saying Alpine's a massively bad thing to do... all I'm saying is he might be that desperate to leave Ferrari. Let's say he left Ferrari and went to Alpine, that would be quite interesting, wouldn't it?"
