Charles Leclerc has been a part of Formula 1 since 2018. After spending a single season with the Alfa Romeo team, he moved up to Ferrari. He’s been with the Prancing Horses ever since, scoring all eight of his wins with the Italian team. While it was his dream to be a part of the sport, it was also his father, Herve’s, dream. So, before Herve passed away in 2017, the young Leclerc lied to his father. He shared that he would be heading to F1 soon, but it wasn’t true. He hadn’t even signed a contract then.
In 2017, Charles Leclerc had secured a GP3 title and was on his way to winning a F2 championship. Meanwhile, his father was battling cancer, and he passed away just four days before Leclerc won the F2 Baku feature race. Before he died, however, the young Monégasque told his dad that he had signed a contract to race in Formula 1.
“Formula 1 is really where you want to get once you start a racing career. That’s where you want to be one day, but I had lied to him two days before he passed away and I told him, ‘Listen, I signed my Formula 1 contract.’,” Leclerc said.
The future Ferrari driver’s lie wasn’t baseless. Given the success he had achieved at that point, he was confident that a contract to race at the top was coming soon. But, with his father on his deathbed, he knew he couldn’t keep waiting for it to happen.
“The year was going well, I was quite confident that this will happen, but I also knew it was a matter of days before he would pass away.”
It was only a month later that the contract came. Charles Leclerc had been called upon by the Alfa Romeo team to be a part of their driver lineup. He was comforted by how soon after his dad’s passing the call came, chalking up his words to Herve as a prediction.
“Luckily, I signed my contract a month later. He wasn’t here anymore, and then I found much more peace within myself because I told myself, ‘Okay, I didn’t lie to my father. I told him the truth, I anticipated things, everything is okay.’”
In his first season with Alfa Romeo, he scored a best finish of P6 at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Overall, he scored 39 points and finished P13 in the standings.
Charles Leclerc talks about the sacrifices his father made for him
Herve Leclerc was a racecar driver himself, competing in F3 from 1983 to 1988. His passion for motorsport rubbed off on young Charles, who started karting from a young age. Given the commitment required to grow in the world of racing, Herve was always there for his son. Despite this passion being an expensive one, and the family not being very well off, the senior Leclerc made many sacrifices for his child’s career. The Ferrari driver is well aware of this and believes that while he got to do what he loved, his father was the one who suffered for it.
“I just did everything that I wanted to do, which was racing, as much as, yes, I wasn’t a lot of time at home when I was a kid, but I was spending my time on track, which was what I loved doing the most.“
“He, on the other hand, sacrificed a lot because motorsport is unfortunately a very expensive sport.“
“He had to do saving for me to be able to do what I love most which was driving, and I was aware of that – and also the fact that obviously he couldn’t see my mum that much because he was always with me on races.” [All quotes via PlanetF1]
Herve Leclerc’s sacrifices have paid off. Charles Leclerc, who has been driving for Ferrari since 2019, scored one very important win recently. Leclerc crossed the line at the 2024 Monaco Grand Prix, winning his home race for the first time in his career. The Monegasque admitted that achieving victory on the streets of Monte Carlo was a dream for him and his father.
“He’s given everything for me to be here. It was a dream of ours for me to race here and to win, so it’s unbelievable.” [via PlanetF1]
In 2025, Leclerc crossed the line at the Monaco Grand Prix in P2, which has been his best finish of the season so far.
