Charles Leclerc won the 2022 season opener after comfortably leading the race as Max Verstappen‘s dreams went up in flames after RB18’s malfunction. Post that, Leclerc emerged as a championship leader for a brief time and a championship contender later. Even before that, his edge over Sebastian Vettel made him the talk of the ‘circus’. But over the last two years, this conversation fizzled out up until his win in Monaco. Despite Leclerc’s talent, Frits van Amersfoort helps us understand why his name hasn’t found its way into conversations next to Max Verstappen and who should we blame for it. Hint: It is his team.

In 1975, Frits van Amersfoort founded his team, Van Amersfoort Racing. In the past decades, most Dutch talents drove in the feeder classes for Van Amersfoort, including Verstappen senior and junior. In 2015, none other than Charles Leclerc filled in for outgoing Max Verstappen in the Formula 3 team. During an interview with F1 Maximaal.nl, Van Amersfoort talked about his experiences with the ‘Lec-stappen’ duo and why Verstappen has the upper hand. It is because at Ferrari, the team and the management are always bigger than its drivers, whereas at Red Bull the team has been shaped around Max Verstappen for almost a decade, giving him the priority and conditions to nurture.

Van Amersfoort explained, ”What’s the difference? Max is a Verstappen, and a Verstappen simply has a completely different personality than any other person. The Verstappen family–so I mean Jos and Max and in a way Raymond (Vermeulen, ed.)–has been able to shape the entire Red Bull team in such a way that it all goes to Max, and no one else. That is why it is going the way it is, in my opinion.” 

He added, ”Charles has won everything there is to win, up to and including GP2 – or Formula 2 – but Charles is a Ferrari driver, and at Ferrari, it is all about Ferrari, and not like at Red Bull, where it is all about Max. That is, in my opinion, the big difference between the two, why Charles still regularly has to bite the dust.” Talking about Ferrari’s role in wasting Leclerc’s talent, Amersfoort also blamed the F1 world’s short-term memory for writing him off.

Frits van Amersfoort also blames F1’s recency bias for Charles Leclerc being written off

2023 was Max Verstappen and Red Bull show through and through with a glitch victory of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. Amid this unprecedented dominance, what everyone forgot was Leclerc’s iconic wins at Spa and Monza in 2019 and his second place in the 2022 championship. His third place in this year’s championship hasn’t also stuck as many chords, but he did get noticed again after his Monaco win.

Amersfoort argued that it is funny that the world has suddenly remembered Charles’ greatness after Monaco. He mocked the sudden resurgence of the F1 world’s interest in him and said, ”I find it funny, by the way, that after his victory in Monaco, there was suddenly a lot of interest in Charles again, while before that time he was – maybe a big word – but before that time he was perhaps a bit written off.”  Moreover, Amersfoort even mentioned how he is not the only one of this opinion.

What do you think about Charles Leclerc being overshadowed by Ferrari’s supremacy or his loss of popularity due to the recency bias? Share your take in the comments.