Charles Leclerc names the one thing he was ‘never’ able to accept at Ferrari, he wanted a ‘miracle’

Charles Leclerc is one of the favourites for the 2025 F1 championship. The Monagasque driver will look to take the fight to Max Verstappen with Ferrari.

Leclerc narrowly missed out on second in the drivers’ standings last year to Lando Norris. The 27-year-old won three races and grabbed 13 podiums, scoring more points than any other driver in the second half of the season.

Ferrari made a step forward in performance in 2024 and are looking to carry the momentum into this season with the SF-25. Ferrari have ‘completed revised’ the front suspension to a pull-rod configuration.

Leclerc and teammate Lewis Hamilton tested the 2025 challenger at Fiorano on Wednesday – a day after the team unveiled their new livery for the upcoming season at the F1 75 launch event. Surprisingly, Leclerc had not seen the design before the event.

The Monagasque driver will be gunning for the title in 2025 – and he feels he is in a much better position now with a new mindset.

Charles Leclerc could ‘never’ accept his Ferrari was not fast enough before mentality change

Leclerc recorded his best points tally and second-best finish in F1 in 2024. The Ferrari driver finished second in 2022 before regressing in 2023.

The SF-23 proved to be inferior compared to Red Bull’s RB19 as it won 21 out of 22 races that year. Ferrari did claim the other win through Carlos Sainz in Singapore – Leclerc grabbed just six podiums and finished fifth in the standings.

Speaking with Lawrence Barretto on F1’s official YouTube channel, the Monagasque driver admitted he could ‘never’ accept that his car was not fast enough, instead hoping for a ‘miracle’ during the race.

After changing his approach for 2024, Leclerc feels ‘very happy’ about his season and he is looking to ‘reproduce’ that mentality to challenge for the championship in 2025.

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Asked whether he feels he can fight this season if he has a competitive car, Leclerc replied: “Yes, I feel that way. As you said, it’s been a bit of a shift of mentality after ’23 where I was never accepting the fact that we’re not fast enough to win and so sometimes you just try and do a miracle.

“But that sometimes won’t happen but also sometimes we’ll end up not well and I will lose quite a few points. And after ’23 I was like: ‘OK, maybe I’ve got to change a little bit the way I approach a season.’

“And whenever it’s the day where… the days where you’ve got to take the points that are available, you’ve got to take them.

“And I think in ’24 this have been achieved very well and when I look back at my season, there’s been very little, if any missed opportunities and on that I’m very happy.

“And I’ll definitely try and reproduce that. And then if we have the car from the first race to the last race then I’m pretty sure we can have a shot to try and win the world title, which is obviously my ultimate dream.”

How Charles Leclerc’s lap times in first SF-25 test compared to Lewis Hamilton

As aforementioned, Ferrari conducted their first test of the SF-25 at Fiorano on Wednesday – Leclerc taking the car in the morning and the Hamilton in the afternoon.

Leclerc stopped on track during his outing after suffering ‘a problem.’ Luckily for him, it was just a shakedown of the car rather than pre-season testing in Bahrain next week.

READ MORE: Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur glad to avoid ‘worst-case scenario’ with major change ahead of 2025 F1 season

Leclerc lapped eight tenths quicker than Hamilton in the test – although this cannot be taken too seriously. The two drivers were likely on different set-ups or running different tyre compounds.

Leclerc came close to Michael Schumacher’s Fiorano record, lapping a best time of 56.06 seconds – a very impressive feat from the Monagasque driver.

While the test was not open to the public, thousands of Ferrari fans turned up to watch their 2025 machine in action. Hamilton simply wrote ‘Grazie Tifosi’ on social media as he thanked the supporters for their incredible devotion.