Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari arrival helping Charles Leclerc psychologically: “Coming for the maturity”

Charles Leclerc has outshone Lewis Hamilton in the 2025 F1 season and scored 5 podiums so far, while the Briton has none. However, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes that the seven-time F1 champion’s arrival at the team has helped the Monegasque “release some pressure”.

Ferrari currently sits P2 in the constructors' championship, despite not having the outright second-best car in the performance index. All the other top teams, including Red Bull, Mercedes, and McLaren, have at least one win this season, except for Ferrari.

While McLaren has been the best team this season, Charles Leclerc has been consistent in his performances and currently sits 5th in the driver's championship. Fred Vasseur came out on the F1 Beyond the Grid podcast and detailed the impact of Lewis Hamilton's arrival on Leclerc's performances.

Tom Clarkson asked Fred Vasseur about how Hamilton's arrival has changed and motivated the team, and questioned whether the Briton’s presence has brought the best out of Charles Leclerc. The Ferrari team principal replied,

“Probably yes. And clearly, I think this helped Charles also a little bit, to release some pressure from Charles. And he did a very good job from the beginning of the season. I think Charles also improved on the approach, on the structure, on how he's more mature. And this, I don't know if it's a part of the contribution of Lewis, but it's coming for the maturity of Charles.” (45:05 onwards)

Charles Leclerc missed out on pole position at Monaco by less than a tenth and finished the race in P2, was the best of the rest at the Belgian GP, and took the pole position at the Hungarian GP out of the blue. The Monegasque was on for a strong result last weekend's Dutch GP before Kimi Antonelli made a bold move, and ended Leclerc's race.

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Charles Leclerc shares his verdict on Kimi Antonelli’s “overly optimistic” move, which ended his Dutch GP

Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli were running P5 and P6, respectively, when the Italian driver pitted on Lap 52 to undercut the Monegasque. The Ferrari driver pitted the very next lap to defend from the undercut, and came out just in front of the Mercedes.

Kimi Antonelli tried making a bold move into Turn 3, ran wide on the exit, and hit the Ferrari, spinning Leclerc into the barrier. Speaking about the incident, Charles Leclerc said,

“What created the incident is Kimi being overly optimistic on the inside of Turn 3, which is fine – you’ve got to be aggressive and mistakes happen.” (via F1)

“But it hurts, because it cost a lot to the team after what was a good race. I think the pace was good. I had to be very aggressive to make up the places that we had lost because of being unlucky during the first Safety Car. We did kind of everything right, so it was a shame.”

Antonelli was given a 10-second penalty and two penalty points on his driver's license for the same offense.