It is not often a young driver enters the frenetic world of Formula One and sparks into life so early in their career, but the gifted Charles Leclerc has always done things a little differently.
In collaboration with Hublot, the Official Timekeeper and Watch partner of Ferrari, we explore the nascent career of a young man who was born to race.
Charles Leclerc in F1 action.
His stand-out result was a scintillating sixth in Baku which made people take notice of his sheer class and he backed it up in round five with 10th place in Barcelona.
Both times he was mixing it with double world champion Fernando Alonso, beating him in Azerbaijan and losing out for ninth place in Spain. An achievement in itself taking on and challenging a veteran of over 300 grand prix races.
Five races into his first season, whispers began to circulate around the paddock about Ferrari replacing Kimi Raikkonen with Leclerc at the end of the 2018 campaign.
It was confirmed two months later in September and, nevertheless, a dream was achieved.
It was a statement of intent from the Italian marque to promote Leclerc so early, but with it would come the pressure and expectation to deliver every week instead of sporadic strong finishes.
A strong pre-season for Ferrari dominated the column inches leading into the 2019 campaign. The car looked sharp, well-balanced and quick around the corners during the two weeks of testing in Barcelona.
And without a constructor’s championship since 2008, the pressure was on both Leclerc and his illustrious new colleague Sebastian Vettel to topple Mercedes’ dominance in the new season.
CHEQUERED FLAG
While the pace didn’t present itself immediately in the Melbourne season-opener, Leclerc snatched a remarkable pole position in Bahrain two weeks later and led for most of the race before a mechanical issue late on denied him victory.
Had the Monaco man won, there could have been a different feeling around Maranello as Mercedes stormed to a second successive one-two.
Still, a first F1 podium on his third competitive drive for Ferrari was an extremely positive result.
The Silver Arrows would go on to win 10 of the first 12 races of the season, but after the summer break, Ferrari began to show their supreme class.
With the Hublot Big Bang Scuderia Ferrari 90th Anniversary tracking his time, Leclerc sealed pole in Belgium and went on to convert his formidable grid position to a stunning maiden F1 triumph.
However, the joy of victory was no doubt balanced by the despair of losing his friend Anthoine Hubert just the day before, following a horror 170mph crash during a Formula 2 race on the same track.
He somehow maintained his poise both before and after the race with composure behind the wheel and admirable words in triumph.
The Monaco native comfortably brought his Ferrari home ahead of a chasing Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes. And as he said on the Ferrari team radio after the race, his first win was the culmination of a lifelong dream, but impossible to enjoy given the circumstances.
The next week, he followed up his inspiring victory in Spa with Ferrari’s first win at their home race in Monza for nine years.
The last time Ferrari secured victory in Italy, Leclerc was taking part in the Junior Monaco Kart Cup as a 12-year-old in Monte Carlo.
He showed his maturity when soaking up pressure from Hamilton for large parts of the race and was smart on the positioning of his car when trying to defend.
Though Hamilton may have won the title again this season, he will realise that his neighbour from the Principality is perhaps his biggest threat to a seventh world title in 2020.
Indeed, despite Hamilton’s recent stranglehold on the sport, 2019 should go down as the year that Leclerc planted his flag.
