Why Charles Leclerc is refusing to board the Ferrari…

It’s a cliche, but no less true for being oft repeated, to say that “it’s the hope that kills you.” In Formula 1 terms, this old adage will be most familiar to Ferrari fans: as the 2026 season begins, it's a little over 18 years and four months since Kimi Raikkonen claimed the drivers’ title with victory in the final round of the 2007 season at Interlagos.

No other team in Formula 1 is so cloaked in myth and mystique as Ferrari. Having contested every year since the world champion began, it enjoys a massive global fanbase – as well as a quasi-religious status in its native Italy.

So expectations are naturally high ahead of every season, no matter how often those hopes have been cruelly dashed. Now entering his eighth year as a Ferrari driver, Charles Leclerc is well acquainted with bearing the weight of expectations – and determined not to get carried away, despite the positivity surrounding the team’s pre-season testing form.

“I'm quite neutral going into this season,” he told media including Motorsport.com before the action got under way in Melbourne.

“I've had quite a few years with the team now and I know how it's like. To be driving for Ferrari is very, very special, but with that also comes a lot of noise and sometimes expectations that doesn't really reflect the real picture.

“So I don't really have any expectations for now. I just go day by day.

“I try to do the best possible job and I hope that this means that on Sunday we are here celebrating the first win of the season. But if not, we'll take it from there and try to work from that.”

Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari celebrates on the podium (Photo by: Sutton Images)

Last year was particularly disappointing for Leclerc and team-mate Lewis Hamilton, since Ferrari had ended the 2024 season with arguably the fastest car on the grid. It was therefore logical to anticipate that Ferrari would carry this form forward – but it failed to negotiate the necessary compromises to run its 2025 car low enough to the ground to maximise its aerodynamic concept.

Ferrari in effect abandoned development of the SF-25 last April in favour of 2026 development and arrived in pre-season testing with a car bristling with interesting ideas, including a clever vane arrangement behind the exhaust and a pivoting upper rear wing element. It also became apparent that it had better anticipated the effect on starting performance of the MGU-H hybrid element being removed from the formula this season.

All this has left Leclerc in a very different kind of expectation management mode after a year of having to bat off increasingly aggressive lines of questioning over Ferrari’s performance.

“I'm always very cautious,” he said. “Yeah, so there's definitely positivity around the team but that's not something that should affect us. And it's something that actually, more than anything, we need to try and avoid thinking about or being affected by.

“Because it's very often the case that you either have negativity or positivity surrounding the team, but that doesn't really reflect the true picture of what's going on behind the scenes. It's actually our job to really focus on what we’re doing as a team.

“I think we did a good job and on that we should be satisfied. I don't think it means much going forward because for now it's very, very early days – and again I don't think anybody really showed their real potential [during pre-season testing] so we will only see after qualifying.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari (Photo by: William West - AFP - Getty Images)

“But surely I prefer to be in position where we're here to calm the expectations down rather than having to manage a lot of negativity around the team – and that's always a bit of a better situation to be in. But in both ways I don't think that this is something that needs to change our own mood inside the team.”

Having said that, Leclerc then led a Ferrari 1-2 in first practice at Albert Park. For all the insistence that it’s too early to anoint a favourite, there will be those already anxiously reconsidering bets on previous bookies’ choice George Russell… But they should do their due diligence on the Mercedes long-run pace first.