Zach Brown@the_zb_
Grande, Charles Leclerc, winner of the 2024 Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix! 😭😭😭🙌🙌🙌
Some of you know what a huge Scuderia Ferrari F1 and Charles Leclerc fan I am. He’s a romantically tragic and inspiring story of heartbreak and perseverance. If you’re a hopeless sporting romantic, grab a seat and a tissue, and indulge me by having a read at my little take on sports writing. This is what it means.
/// The Origins of “Il Predestinato”
One of only a few thousand native Monegasques, Charles grew up in a working class family in the Principality of Monaco surrounded by non-native billionaires and professional F1 racers who had adopted it as home. Watching cars zoom across the same streets where he walked to school each year at the Formula 1 Grand Prix through his home town became an intrinsic part of Charles’ passion from the start.
The son of a hairdresser mom and a never-quite-made-it Formula 3 racing driver Father, even as a young karting driver Charles was special. But in a sport where young prodigy karting kids with billionaire families are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as young as age 8 or 9 for race entries, there’s no path forward without money backing you.
Charles’ brothers stopped karting so the family could focus every bit of their effort and finances to giving Charles the chance that his talent deserved. But eventually, the resources simply ran out. It was the end for Charles.
Enter the unlikely story of a young phenom Ferrari prospect, Jules Bianchi, a young driver racing through the junior ranks for the Ferrari Driver Academy, seeing the 8yrs younger Charles racing on karting circuits because of a friendship with Charles’ older brother. Jules immediately saw a “can’t miss” prospect, who had reached the end of his family’s ability to keep him racing.
Jules would have none of the thought that Charles could not keep racing because of money. He intervened, connecting the Leclerc family with the Todt family of legendary former Ferrari team boss Jean Todt, begging Todt and Ferrari to find a path forward for Charles and sign him to a Ferrari Academy contract. They did.
Jules became not only a mentor and career-saver, but also close family friend and Godfather to Charles. As Jules’ career began the ascendancy through a backmarker F1 team towards an almost assured Ferrari Formula 1 seat, he scored his very first points in a dreadful car with a backmarker team at the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix. An incredible achievement.
