Charles Leclerc stopped trying to be Lewis Hamilton and he won straight away

'Remember who you are' has become the new mantra for seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, but it seems his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc has finally adopted it as well.

The Monegasque star committed his long-term future to the Scuderia at his home race weekend in June, but as soon as he had announced the multi-year contract, his on-track performances started to fall apart.

The 28-year-old DNF'd in front of his home crowd that very same weekend, before doing the same at the following race in Barcelona where Hamilton basked in the glory of his first grand prix victory with the team.

Then came the Austrian Grand Prix with Leclerc finishing way down in P8 before going on to pick up a similarly forgettable sixth place last weekend in the Silverstone Sprint.

All the while, his legend of a team-mate was racking up championship points and emerging as a very real title contender against Mercedes pair Kimi Antonelli and George Russell.

Viewed through that prism, it was entirely natural that Leclerc looked to Hamilton's side of the garage to see what he could learn from one of the sport's greats. Except it did not work out like that.

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Leclerc explains miraculous Ferrari turnaround

After that Silverstone Sprint, Leclerc announced he would be making a significant change for qualifying, one which he would take forward if successful. The results, immediately, were spectacular.

The Monegasque qualified in P2 for the British Grand Prix - ahead of Hamilton - and 24 hours later produced a terrific drive to claim his first victory in 624 days.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur confirmed to media after his successful qualifying stint that it was no coincidence Leclerc had managed to turn things around in time for the main event, saying: "It wasn’t magic."

After weeks of copying Hamilton's approach and even switching over to use the same brake supplier as the former Mercedes star (abandoning the company he has relied on his entire career) Leclerc finally worked out that trying to become Hamilton was never going to work for him.

Hamilton's former team-mate Jenson Button even warned prior to the ninth championship round in Silverstone: "Just copying the guy on the other side of the garage's setup, it doesn't work if you have a different style of driving."

So, in the midst of a British Grand Prix weekend which had appeared to be heading off course again, Leclerc suddenly decided to change everything and in doing so, ended his own long win drought.

Afterwards, Leclerc would tell respected Italian outlet La Gazzetta Dello Sport: "I was following Lewis’s instructions, but at a certain point I realised they weren’t working for me.

"So I took a chance; together with the engineers, I tried to apply to the car what has always worked for my driving style. I wasn’t sure I’d succeed, but it went well and suddenly I rediscovered the feel I was looking for."

Just like that Leclerc was back in the game, and the change was quite incredible. He spoke in more detail about the lightbulb moment in Sundays post-race press conference.

"When I say philosophical, it's more about small details that just fit my driving a little bit better in a particular phase of the corner. I don't want to go too much into detail there. But it's just a few things that I saw on the data on Friday night and I was like, "OK, that might be things that just don't fit with my driving style."

"And we changed those few things from sprint race to qualifying and that was a lot better. So yeah, I was very proud of the work we've done to see that because I think this kind of change is not really so black and white.

"You just don't look at data and say, "My God, OK, this is what we need to change." It's intuition mixed with feeling. Then we went for it and it was actually a very successful direction for me. I was very happy."

Just like Hamilton did, Leclerc remembered who he was. And now Ferrari have two drivers capable of challenging for race wins.

The drought at Maranello is well and truly over.

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Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

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