Ferrari forever?
The start of a new Formula 1 season is always welcomed with curiosity and hope by drivers and professionals as well as enthusiasts. Never like this year, however, with such a huge technical revolution, has there been an interest in understanding what will be the values in the field when the traffic lights go out. To the microphones of Sky Sports F1in a long exclusive interview, Charles Leclerc tried to draw a very first assessment of what Ferrari’s hopes are. First of all, however, Leclerc is just returning from his marriage to his partner Alexandra and one wonders whether a “forever” can also come about his stay at Ferrari.
“A lifetime contract I don’t know if it’s ever been done – glossed over Leclerc, whose love for the Cavallino team is well known – but we’re definitely talking about it“.
Chasing the Mercedes
What interests the red fans most at the moment, however, are the chance that the SF-26 will have to compete for the World Championship. Leclerc didn’t want to go too far, but tried to draw up a very first performance ranking, based above all on what little could be deduced from the tests: “We are happy with how we worked – declared the Monegasque – in 2025 one of the negative points was the pre-season test, while this year it was a very good test, in which we obtained a lot of information. In what order are the four top teams? Knowing what level we are all at is difficult. We don’t know how much the others really pushed and the others don’t know how much margin we had. Of course, if Mercedes were to come here to Australia and pump out 50 more hp, then we’d be way off. But I hope that’s not the case. My feeling at the moment is that we are the second-third force, together with Red Bull and with McLaren slightly behind, but very close.. Mercedes, on the other hand, seems to be ahead. However, developments during the championship will count a lot“.
Departures, a strong point
However, one element on which the Prancing Horse seems ahead of the competition are the Departures. Also on this topic, understandably, Leclerc did not want to say too much, but his words revealed a certain confidence in the actual advantage of the reds: “We are certainly more ‘robust’ than the others – said Leclerc a Sky – and with the direction we have taken it is normal for this to be the case. But I think that as the races go by the others will also find their ‘robustness’. At the peak of performance at the start, if the others also do all things well, I don’t think we will have a great advantage, but I hope I’m wrong. Certainly the start remains a crucial moment of the race, perhaps the most important given the difficulty in overtaking that we saw in the tests, e.g in this aspect we are certainly on the ‘good side’“Whether this will be enough to start the 2026 World Cup with a victory we will only find out on Sunday.
