Charles Leclerc has signed bumper a five-year contract extension to stay with Ferrari until the end of 2029, according to Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport.
Leclerc is at the end of his fifth season at Ferrari. He has one more year to run on what was an unprecedented five-year contract extension signed at the end of his maiden campaign in red in 2019.
Another five years will take him into his 11th campaign with motorsport’s most famous team, equalling Michael Schumacher’s record long Maranello tenure spanning 1996 to 2006.
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According to Gazzetta, Leclerc will also double his salary in exchange for his long-term commitment, with his annual earnings set to rocket to around €50 million (A$82 million) a year if he sees out the full term of his deal.
The new contract will reportedly come with performance clauses on Leclerc’s side that could allow him to exit the team at the end of 2027.
Both Leclerc and teammate Carlos Sainz signalled this year that they intended to secure their long-term futures at Ferrari before the start of 2024, when they would be out of contract.
Ferrari president John Elkann told an investor call for parent company Exor that he expected both “will stay of course” with the team beyond the end of their current deals.
However, Gazzetta further reports that Sainz is yet to secure a deal. Ferrari is reportedly so far unwilling to offer him more than a one-year deal, preferring instead to reserve the right to test the driver market again next year, though few high-profile stars will be out of contract in 2024.
Elkann last year described Leclerc as being in “pole position” to lead the team to its next championship challenge.
Sainz has also long been connected to Sauber, where his former McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl is preparing the ground for Audi’s full takeover in 2026, though the Spaniard has previously denied the existence of a pre-contract agreement.
WHY HAS FERRARI COMMITTED FOR SO LONG?
Ferrari’s five-year offer is the latest example of Formula 1 teams locking in star drivers on long-term deals, giving themselves the chance to build their cars around a central character for entire regulatory cycles.
Leclerc was the first in 2019, signalling the end of Sebastian Vettel’s stint with the red team.
Red Bull Racing locked in Max Verstappen on a seven-year deal expiring at the end of 2028, signed shortly after he won the 2021 drivers title.
McLaren secured Lando Norris with a series of deals in 2021 and 2022 that will hold him at the team until the end of 2025 — though Oscar Piastri has a longer deal to stay at Woking until the end of 2026.
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The obvious benefit is that a long-term deal shields a team from getting caught up in a messy and destabilising silly season, with only one seat ever theoretically at risk.
But in every case there has been a tacit admission that the team needs its star drivers more than the other way around.
When Red Bull Racing secured Verstappen ahead of the 2022 season, there had been a worry that the team would take a step backwards under the new regulations, having committed much energy and resource to powering the Dutchman to the 2021 crown.
McLaren has wallowed in the lower reaches of the midfield for almost all of Norris’s time with the team, coming good in only the last six months of this year. The Briton has been hot property throughout his career, with Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner having admitted to considering him for a seat in earlier years.
Meanwhile, Ferrari failed to convert a strong start under last year’s new rules into a second-year title challenge, slipping backwards into the pack.
It’s a no-brainer for the Scuderia, who has at its disposal arguably the fastest qualifier in the sport and an obvious championship-calibre talent.
Leclerc has racked up 23 pole positions since he scored his first in 2019 despite very rarely, if ever, having the outright fastest car at his disposal.
In that same time frame Max Verstappen has scored 32, just nine more, despite having been in the quickest car for at least two campaigns and a quicker car than the Ferrari for most of the rest of them.
That the Monegasque has won only five races reflects on his car and team, not on his ability.
WHY WOULD LECLERC STAY AT FERRARI?
While it makes perfect sense for Ferrari, it makes on the surface less sense for Leclerc, who is committing to a team that has failed to win a championship of any kind in 15 years despite being the best equipped and best funded in the sport.
Ferrari’s history of underperformance is legendary.
Many will remember the team’s long streaks of success, the most recent of which was the Michael Schumacher-led golden age of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Fewer readily recall the barren run through the late 1980s and into the 1990s or the dry spell between the 1960s and 1970s. The current 15-year title-less run is just the latest in a story of excruciating droughts.
Why would Leclerc commit himself to that beyond his 31st birthday?
For one, Leclerc has made no secret of his passion for Ferrari. He’s been a Scuderia tifoso from birth, and racing in red is a real dream come true for him. While this year’s various big disappointments have forced him to admit he may one day have to consider leaving Maranello for the sake of his career, his preference would be for Ferrari to get its act together and save him the expense of designing new personal merchandise.
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Second is that Leclerc is showing his faith in Ferrari’s new direction under team principal Frédéric Vasseur. The French team boss replaced Mattia Binotto over the off-season — Leclerc and Binotto are rumoured to have fallen out over the team’s trajectory — and has had an immediate impact, particularly in race execution.
Signs of on-track progress are also clear. By the end of the season Ferrari was a regular pole contender. Sainz became the only non-Red Bull Racing driver to win after securing victory in Singapore, and Leclerc probably would have won in Las Vegas were it not for a badly timed safety car.
The third reason is less inspiring but no less relevant: where would he go that could offer better prospects?
Red Bull Racing is the only team almost guaranteed to provide him a winning car, but there’s little sign the team is genuinely interested in putting another alpha driver alongside Verstappen.
On the evidence of 2023, Mercedes is still at sea with its car concept. With its glory years now faded in the rear-view mirror, there’s no reason to think of the Silver Arrows as a safe bet.
McLaren is committed to its current line-up, and though its progress has been the strongest of all, it still has to prove its good form can last more than six months.
Aston Martin remains unproven, particularly given only Fernando Alonso could get the car onto the podium.
After 2022, Ferrari is still Leclerc’s best bet of getting into a competitive cockpit in the short term.
A long-term deal also acknowledges the likelihood that the best bet of any team other than Red Bull Racing to challenge for the championship will be at the introduction of the new rules in 2026.
Leclerc’s new deal will see him past that threshold — but, crucially, will reportedly give him the power to break his contract after three years, at the end of 2027, if Ferrari isn’t living up to its promises.
By then the driver market and the competitive order will likely look dramatically different to today’s status quo. Still in his late 20s, Leclerc will suffer no loss in bargaining power on the open market.
Any long-term deal comes with the chance of delivering a big dose of regret. This could be the assessment we make of Leclerc’s deal in 2027 or sooner.
But in the era of franchise F1 drivers on multiyear deals, Leclerc has tied himself to the least worst option behind Red Bull Racing and given himself the chance of being the man to take the Scuderia back to the promised land.