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Charles Leclerc is set to miss the free practice 1 session in Austria, with Dino Beganovic slated to take his seat for the session to fulfil the FIA mandate for rookie driver outings. The Swedish driver had previously filled in for the eight-time race winner at the FP1 session during the Bahrain GP weekend.
Starting from the 2022 season, teams were required to run one rookie driver in each car, meaning two FP1 sessions for young drivers against the big guns of motorsport. However, from the 2025 season, this ruling was changed, and the allocation for rookie drivers per car was doubled, resulting in four rookie driver sessions per season for each team.
At Ferrari, only Leclerc has given way for rookie drivers so far this season, as Beganovic took his car for a run in Sakhir. The remaining two obligatory young driver sessions will now be conducted with Lewis Hamilton's car in the remaining race weekends.
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The 21-year-old rookie driver had finished 14th in his maiden FP1 session in Bahrain. He was 1.255 seconds off Hamilton's time in the practice session and would like to build upon his knowledge of driving an F1 car with his second outing in the SF-25 at the Red Bull Ring later this month.
The Canadian GP marked the end of Charles Leclerc's podium streak
Meanwhile, Charles Leclerc has been at the forefront for the Scuderia this season. Despite Lewis Hamilton being a seven-time world champion, he has struggled to adapt to the SF25, which has allowed the Monegasque to get the upper hand in the intra-team battle.
The 27-year-old scored his first podium of the season in Saudi Arabia but suffered some mediocre races in the following race weekends. But, he tipped his fortune at the Monaco and the Spanish Grand Prix, where he claimed two podiums in succession and brought hopes for Tifosi that this season could be saved.
However, these hopes were short-lived as the Canadian GP marked the end of his podium streak, as he finished fifth. Reflecting on the race, Leclerc said (via Ferrari):
"P5 was the best we could do today. We could maybe have tried to do something different with the strategy, but at the end of the day, it wouldn’t have changed much for the outcome of the race. Most of all, our starting position was what put us at a disadvantage.
"It’s quite a specific track, so I don’t think that too much of what we saw in terms of performance will carry on to the coming races. We will regroup and come back stronger."
On the other hand, Charles Leclerc has been a previous winner at the Red Bull Ring and would hope to secure a similar result after constructors' championship rivals Mercedes aced the weekend in Canada.
