Charles Leclerc and future teammate Lewis Hamilton have no regrets about Ferrari losing the race to sign Adrian Newey, with both putting their faith in the team’s new technical structure.
Ferrari emerged as a frontrunner to secure iconic F1 designer Newey earlier this year, when he announced he would leave Red Bull Racing after a more-than 18-year stint that returned six constructors titles and seven drivers championships.
The Briton had previously expressed regret over never having worked for Ferrari and never having worked with Lewis Hamilton.
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But the Scuderia reportedly withdrew from the race in fear of engaging in a bidding war with the determined and cashed-up Aston Martin, which this week announced Newey would start at Silverstone as managing technical partner next March as well as becoming a shareholder.
The BBC has since reported he will be paid up to £30 million ($59 million) a year over five seasons in a bank-busting $295 million deal.
Hamilton, whose Ferrari switch announcement in January was of similar magnitude to Newey’s news, denied he was disappointed to miss out on the chance to link up with the sport’s most decorated designer.
“Honestly, no,” he said, per ESPN. “I feel like, while I’ve mentioned before that it would be an honour to work with Adrian, I have been privileged to work with two championship-winning teams that didn’t have Adrian.
“I think any team probably would have been happy to have had him, but at the end of the day he had to do what was best for him. It doesn’t change anything for me.
“It doesn’t change my goal or my focus with the next move. I still believe 100 per cent that there’s lots we can do there.”
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Leclerc shared Hamilton’s sentiments, saying he had faith that Ferrari could succeed without him.
“There are no disappointments,” he said. “It’s not like we haven’t tried or spoken to Adrian.
“I know that there were talks and he made his decision. I respect his decision.
“At the end as Ferrari, we have always considered more the group than the individual. Of course Adrian has an incredible [record] and has done amazing things.
“But we have an amazing group and I have no doubts that going forward we have an extremely strong team to come back at the top.”
Newey’s announcement on Tuesday followed news out of Ferrari last week that Loïc Serra would replace outbound technical director Enrico Cardile.
Cardile confirmed in July that he was stepping down from Ferrari immediately to join Aston Martin as chief technical officer next season.
Serra had been Mercedes’s performance director since 2019 and was initially given the role of head of chassis performance engineering when his move to Maranello was made public in May.
However, Cardile’s Aston defection has forced the Scuderia to rejig its technical line-up, promoting the Frenchman to technical director.
Serra will report directly to team principal Frédéric Vasseur once he begins work on 1 October.
“I’m really happy with the structure,” Leclerc said.
“Obviously it’s Fred’s job to try and put the team in the best possible place to try and win races, and I 200 per cent trust Fred and I’m completely on-board with his vision.
“It’s a continuous process to try and improve Ferrari over the years, and we are in the middle of this process, but I am super happy with the way he sees things and the things he does.”
Serra will be on board in time to lead development of the team’s 2026 car.
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Ferrari has more immediate problems to contend with, however, as it attempts to resuscitate its 2024 campaign.
The Scuderia started the year strongly as Red Bull Racing’s closest challenger but tailed off dramatically through the middle third of the season, just as McLaren began contending for victories.
The team has since admitted upgrades brought to June’s Spanish Grand Prix hurt its performance, bringing back the aerodynamic bouncing that afflicted this generation of car in the first year of these rules in 2021.
Ferrari brought new parts before and after the mid-season break to try to restore the SF-24 to competitiveness. It’s since scored three podiums in a row, including Leclerc’s famous Italian Grand Prix victory last time out.
Leclerc expects to perform strongly again in Baku, a track layout that should suit Ferrari, but cautioned that the team needed to keep its feet on the ground before declaring its recovery work a success.
“Our car would seem to be suited to this track, but it’s impossible to say if we’ll be ahead or behind before we see what our competitors’ pace is like,” he said. “Once again we must concentrate on ourselves and on how we execute the whole weekend.
“If we can maintain the level we demonstrated in Zandvoort and Monza, I expect us to be competitive.”
The team is only 39 points behind Red Bull Racing in the constructors championship and 31 points behind the second-placed McLaren. With eight rounds to go, Leclerc was optimistic the Italian team could yet re-emerge as a title contender.
“A lot will depend on us and how we tackle the rest of the season, race by race,” he said.
I think we have the right mentality in the team at the moment, and we have to continue like this.
“With so many cars at the same level, honestly, there is still everything to play for.”
But teammate Carlos Sainz warned that it wouldn’t be until the United States Grand Prix, following the street races in Azerbaijan and Singapore, that Ferrari would get a true read on its place in the pecking order.
“We need to take it one race at a time,” he said. “In order to check the effectiveness of the updates we introduced on the car, we will have to wait until Austin.
“In the meantime we’ll continue to push to the maximum.”