He was, and perhaps still is, the “Chosen One.” Il Predestinato. The young prince from Monaco, hand-picked and groomed by Ferrari, destined to wear the iconic scarlet suit and bring the drivers’ world championship back to Maranello. When Charles Leclerc arrived at Scuderia Ferrari in 2019, it felt like a prophecy being fulfilled. He was everything the team and its legions of fans—the Tifosi—craved: fiercely fast, blindingly charismatic, and possessing a raw, untamed talent that evoked the legends of old. In his very first season, he did the unthinkable: he beat his teammate, a four-time World Champion, Sebastian Vettel. The future wasn’t just bright; it was a blinding, brilliant red.

Fast forward six grueling years. That blinding light has faded, replaced by the flickering, frustrating glow of a car that simply isn’t good enough. The prophecy is broken. The Chosen One is still waiting. And as we watch the 2025 season collapse into yet another predictable pattern of disappointment, the question on everyone’s mind is no longer when Charles Leclerc will win with Ferrari, but if he will. More urgently, how much longer can he endure this painful stagnation before his loyalty, his career, and his very spirit are broken beyond repair?

Driving for Ferrari is not like driving for any other team. It is a unique burden, a “passion and a torment,” as the team’s founder, Enzo Ferrari, might have said. You don’t just carry your own ambitions; you carry the weight of a nation. You carry the expectations of millions of Tifosi worldwide who view anything less than victory as a personal failure. For Leclerc, this weight has become a crushing burden. He has spent his prime years, the years when a driver hones his talent into championship-winning steel, fighting a car that is fundamentally flawed.

Think for a moment about his generational rivals. In the same period that Leclerc has been wrestling with uncompetitive machinery, Max Verstappen has forged a dynasty at Red Bull, rattling off four consecutive world titles. At McLaren, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are thriving in a culture of upward mobility and clinical execution. They are building their legacies. Leclerc, widely regarded as one of the most naturally gifted drivers on the grid, is simply… surviving. He is surviving a culture of chaos, a revolving door of management, and a relentless cycle of hope and despair.

This wasn’t the plan. After a controversial engine-related penalty reset the team’s progress in late 2019, Leclerc accepted the fallout with grace. He publicly committed to the rebuild. He sacrificed 2020 and 2021, two vital years of his young career, toiling in the midfield with the belief that the new ground-effect regulations in 2022 would be his moment.

And for a fleeting instant, it was. The 2022 car, the F1-75, was a rocketship out of the box. Leclerc dominated the opening rounds. The dream was alive. Then, the Ferrari of old returned. Unreliability, strategic blunders that bordered on farcical, and chaotic execution saw his championship lead evaporate. It wasn’t just a loss; it was a self-inflicted wound.

The pattern has since become tragically familiar. In 2023, the car had blistering one-lap pace but devoured its tires over a race distance, making victories impossible. In 2024, a sudden surge of form after the summer break was, once again, too little, too late.

Now, in 2025, when the field was expected to be closer, Ferrari has collapsed to arguably the fourth-best team on the grid. The season has been a catalog of disasters: suspension issues, reliability nightmares, and even a disqualification in China for an underweight car. Leclerc, a man once known for his lethal qualifying form, has seen that edge begin to fade. After one particularly grueling race, he admitted, “I’m not doing the job right now.” Those are not the words of a man who has lost his talent. They are the words of a driver exhausted from fighting battles he was never meant to fight—battles against his own team’s incompetence.

How many times can a driver smile for the cameras, defend the indefensible, and promise that “next year will be better”? At some point, that loyalty begins to feel like a punishment. His passion remains heartbreakingly pure. “My only obsession is to win in red,” he has said, time and again. But passion alone cannot change reality.

In seven full years with the Scuderia, Charles Leclerc has never been given a truly title-capable car. Not once. Kimi Räikkönen, the team’s last champion, had one. Fernando Alonso, for all his frustrations, had one. Even Sebastian Vettel had two. Leclerc, the man anointed as the team’s future, has had nothing but a string of “what ifs” and “almosts.”

This is where the whispers start. In the Formula 1 paddock, denial is just another form of negotiation. We all remember Lewis Hamilton publicly denying talks with other teams in 2023, right before his earth-shattering announcement that he would be moving to Ferrari. Leclerc, of course, denies everything. He is committed. But behind closed doors, team bosses notice. Rivals notice. And Leclerc himself knows that the clock is ticking.

The tragedy of this situation is that Leclerc has done everything right. He has shown unwavering loyalty. He has taken personal accountability for his own mistakes, often when the team deserved the blame. He has led with a class and maturity that belie the chaos surrounding him. But Formula 1 is a cruel sport. It does not reward patience or loyalty. It rewards performance. And Ferrari’s performance has been a betrayal of his talent.

If this continues, Leclerc risks being remembered not as a Ferrari legend, but as the greatest wasted talent of his generation.

This entire saga is made infinitely more poignant by his personal history. Leclerc’s journey to Ferrari is not just a career path; it is the fulfillment of a spiritual quest. He races carrying the dream of his godfather, Jules Bianchi, the gifted driver and fellow Ferrari Driver Academy member who was tragically destined for the scarlet seat before his life was cut short. Leclerc is living the life Bianchi never got to. Winning a title for Ferrari isn’t just a personal ambition; it’s a promise he made to the man who helped shape his path.

But even the most powerful, emotionally-charged dreams can break under the relentless weight of reality.

Inside Leclerc’s mind, a storm must be raging. He has already tested the 2026 car—the car for the next generation of regulations—in Ferrari’s simulator. He knows, better than anyone, where the team stands. He hears the whispers from other drivers about which engine manufacturers and aerodynamic departments are getting it right.

The 2026 regulations are not just another season; they are an ultimatum. They represent a complete reset and, for Leclerc, likely the final test of his faith. If Ferrari fails again, if that 2026 car is not competitive from the very first race, it could finally be the push that forces him to walk away. After spending the better part of a decade waiting for a car that never arrives, he doesn’t need another “rebuild.” He needs results.

If that moment comes, leaving would not be an act of betrayal. It would be an act of survival.

Charles Leclerc is not ready to abandon Ferrari. Not yet. The emotional ties, the history, and the dream of his godfather still hold him there. But with every race, every missed opportunity, and every radio message laced with unconcealed frustration, he is pushed closer to the edge. The next 12 months will not just define Ferrari’s future; they will decide if Charles Leclerc is remembered as the team’s greatest redemption or its most profound tragedy.