Charles Leclerc has spent most of his adult life orbiting Maranello, and the pull clearly hasn’t weakened. The Ferrari academy signing from 2016, who stepped up to the works team in 2019 after a year at Sauber, still hasn’t got the one thing he’s chased the longest: a World Championship. He has eight wins, a best finish of second in 2022, and a garage that still believes he’s the driver to bring Ferrari back to the very top.
Inside that garage, few know the emotional undercurrent better than Francesco Cigarini. The Ferrari mechatronics engineer, speaking to Formula1.it, framed Leclerc’s loyalty not as blind faith, but as the most human fear in racing: leaving right before the tide turns. In Cigarini’s words, Leclerc’s calculation sounds like this—what if he walks away and, a year later, Ferrari finally builds the car to beat?
Cigarini’s connection to Leclerc goes back to karting paddocks and a shared wound. He admits the team saw echoes of Jules Bianchi in the young Monegasque: raw speed, edge, and that intangible spark Ferrari had been missing. Leclerc, he says, arrived an explosive talent that needed taming—learning how to shape a team around him, tune the car, live with the tyres. That education takes time. It also builds roots.
So could he leave? “It’s possible,” Cigarini concedes, but he doesn’t think it’s imminent. He even admits he asked himself the same “what if the next one is the right one?” question when he chose to move on from Ferrari. In the end, you make your call and live with it. Leclerc, for now, seems unwilling to risk watching someone else win in red because he ran out of patience.
There’s another layer to this. A title with Ferrari isn’t just a line on a CV; it’s the kind of legacy that lives on the walls of the museum. Cigarini believes missing out on a championship with Ferrari would sting more for Leclerc than not winning one at all—unless something breaks inside the relationship. He doesn’t see that fracture today.
Leclerc extended with Ferrari in 2024, committing for “several seasons to come,” a line that conveniently straddles F1’s 2026 rules reset. That’s the next big roll of the dice for everyone. For Leclerc, it’s also the reason to stick, fight, and hope that the most famous team in the sport finally gives him the car he’s been waiting for—before anyone can talk him into starting over somewhere else.
