Charles Leclerc Shown Glorious Dream as Momentary Brilliance Against Max Verstappen Puts Ferrari in Spotlight

Here’s a statistic Charles Leclerc wouldn’t want to hear about: He hasn’t converted his 12 most recent poles into wins. The latest addition to this came at the Las Vegas GP last weekend. Who won the race? You guessed it. Max Verstappen. Seeing as Verstappen has 11 wins from Leclerc’s 23 poles, who else could it have been? The Ferrari driver’s last win came at the 2022 Austrian GP, and since then, Verstappen and (occasionally) Sergio Perez have been ruining his party. But Leclerc came close to running theirs in Vegas.

Before the lights went out in Vegas, there weren’t too many expectations for the race. In fact, everyone expected it to be a typical street race with less to no overtaking. But boy, did the Las Vegas GP prove everyone wrong! All 50 laps of the race were action-packed, with overtakes happening left, right, and center. And what was even better? There was an actual fight for the win, and Leclerc was one of the three protagonists.

The Las Vegas GP may have been a turning point for Charles Leclerc & Co.

“He can be beaten,” said Charles Leclerc about Max Verstappen earlier this season. In Vegas, it came close to fruition. There’s just something about street tracks that Leclerc and Ferrari love. Every time F1 has visited one this season, the SF-23 has fired up and delivered. At least in qualifying. That’s precisely what happened in Vegas. But what was different about the Sin City outing was that Leclerc and Ferrari genuinely looked like they had the race pace to challenge Red Bull. And that they did.

After starting on pole, with Verstappen alongside him, Leclerc lost the lead (rather unfairly) to the Dutchman into Turn 1. Verstappen got a five-second penalty for his move but kept the lead. Till then, everyone believed Verstappen would take yet another easy win. It wasn’t until Lap 16, when Leclerc retook the lead of the race, that Ferrari started believing again. Former Ferrari General Manager Peter Windsor addressed this in his post-race debrief. He said, “Charles takes the lead on Lap 16. Nice pass over Max. Max’s tires having fallen off the cliff at this point. He then comes into the pits, serves the penalty, and comes back out into the George Russell mess.”

Windsor added, “Charles Leclerc is then left in the front of the race with nobody around him, looking after the tires really well. Ferrari looks like a race-winning package at this point.” Had it not been for the timing of the Safety Car after Verstappen and George Russell’s collision, Leclerc could’ve very well taken the win. Luck hasn’t been on Leclerc’s side for a long time. But he and Ferrari can take positives from their pace in Vegas. On a track with mostly straights, the SF-23 managed to challenge Red Bull’s RB19 with its superior straight-line speed. 

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Even though there’s only one race left, the Las Vegas GP could’ve very well been a turning point for Charles Leclerc and Ferrari. The SF-23 was a race-winning car in Vegas, and Ferrari would hope to carry this momentum into Abu Dhabi and the 2024 season. Yes, Leclerc may have been unlucky, but he was absolutely thrilled with his performance.

Leclerc did something no one has done this season

The RB19 has been an almost invincible machine in 2023. Overtaking it (Verstappen more than Perez), let alone beating it, has been a challenge for every non-Red Bull driver. But Leclerc did it not once, not twice, but three times in Vegas. Following his mega overtake on Verstappen, the Ferrari driver overtook Perez twice, both of which were absolute masterclasses. The second overtook happened on the last lap to give Leclerc P2 by just over a tenth. Needless to say, he was ecstatic.

After crossing the line, Leclerc exclaimed on the radio, “At least the second place, at least the second place. I wanted that win so bad.” Even though he didn’t get the win, he was extremely happy with his race. “Today, I didn’t leave anything on the table. I maximized absolutely everything. We got unlucky with the Safety Car. It was only five laps after we boxed. We struggled for the second half of the race, which is a shame. On the other hand, today was a really, really good race. And I’m really happy,” Leclerc said in a post-race interview.

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Do you think Charles Leclerc and Ferrari can build on this form and take it into 2024? Could the Scuderia be Red Bull’s fiercest competitor next season?