Charles Leclerc “needs a new challenge” outside of Ferrari, in the opinion of former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner.

That theory comes amid mounting frustration for Leclerc after an underwhelming start to the F1 2025 campaign for Ferrari, with Steiner pointing to how Lewis Hamilton called time on his record-breaking Mercedes career to become Leclerc’s Ferrari team-mate, as inspiration for why “change is good” sometimes.

Charles Leclerc and Ferrari: A split needed?

Ferrari pushed McLaren all the way to a Constructors’ Championship decider last season, but the Scuderia has regressed compared to the competition in F1 2025, with just one podium claimed across the opening seven rounds.

That leaves Ferrari P4 in the Constructors’ standings, already 165 points behind runaway leaders McLaren.

Neither Leclerc nor Hamilton made the final Q3 stage of qualifying last time out at Imola, as Leclerc made his displeasure quite clear.

“We are just P-nowhere at the moment,” he told Sky F1.

“There’s not enough performance in the car and I keep repeating myself.

“There’s just not the potential that we will hope inside this car at the moment and we need to be better.”

And during an appearance on the Red Flags podcast, when asked for his stance on a ‘Charles Leclerc needs to leave Ferrari to win a World Championship’ prompt, Steiner suggested that Leclerc should consider heading for the Ferrari exit.

A graduate of the Ferrari Driver Academy, Leclerc has raced for the iconic Italian outfit since 2019, in that time claiming eight grand prix wins.

“He needs a new challenge,” Steiner said of Leclerc.

“I think he’s been there a long time, sometimes change is good like Lewis left Mercedes to go to Ferrari.

“I think Charles, it’s like something new because at some stage everything just becomes routine.

“He is not in a position to win a championship, so if he maybe goes somewhere else, maybe he gets lucky, you never know.”

Lewis Hamilton v Charles Leclerc in F1 2025

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

That being said, Steiner also warned Leclerc about the flip side of that coin.

“But he could be unlucky and go to the wrong team,” Steiner cautioned, “like Fernando Alonso did.”

After winning the 2005 and 2006 titles with Renault, Alonso – while coming close on several occasions – was never able to add to his tally in subsequent stints with McLaren, Ferrari and Renault, having returned to the team in 2008 and again in 2021 after the Alpine rebranding.

Alonso would sign with Aston Martin from 2023.

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