"That will be the headline!" Charles Leclerc exclaims as a smile spreads across his face.
The Ferrari driver has sat through enough interviews in his seven years in Formula 1 to know when he has been asked a leading question, and he is now in the habit of calling them out.
The question wasn't necessarily unfair, but it was only ever going to elicit one answer. Midway through our interview, conducted last month in Azerbaijan, Leclerc made clear that Ferrari would target the title in 2025.
That in itself is nothing unusual -- Ferrari targets the title every year -- but as the famous Italian team teeters on the cusp of a 16th straight season without a championship success, the follow-up question was whether he truly believed that target was realistic next time round?
"Yes," came the resolute answer. "It is."
A slightly awkward moment of silence followed before Leclerc laughed and, correctly, predicted the answer would form the lead quote in this article.
But it's the reasoning as to why Leclerc thinks Ferrari is on the brink of a breakthrough, not so much the quote itself, that is most interesting. Especially as the stakes are set to rise even higher next year with the arrival of seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton as his teammate.
Putting his faith in Vasseur
Since Leclerc started at Ferrari in 2019, the closest he's come to a championship was 2022, when he started the year in strong form but lost momentum by mid-season. As Ferrari faltered and became stuck in a development cul-de-sac, Max Verstappen and Red Bull emerged as the sport's dominant force and swept to comfortable victories in both drivers' and constructors' championships.
The 2023 season saw Verstappen double down on his dominance, while Leclerc, along with the vast majority of the F1 grid, failed to win a race. At the start of this season, the green shoots of recovery started to emerge at Maranello, but so far have only blossomed into three victories, with teammate Carlos Sainz's win in Australia preceding Leclerc's victories in Monaco and Monza.
Meanwhile, rivals McLaren have leapfrogged Ferrari to become Red Bull's biggest threat. Lando Norris, and not Leclerc, is now hunting down Verstappen's lead in the drivers' championship with six races remaining.
"Every season that we go into, we always think about and target the title," Leclerc says. "That's what Ferrari should target, and I believe that we are working very well as a team.
"Competition is very tough, and they are very strong -- McLaren, especially in the second part of this season, have been impressive -- but we are understanding quite a lot of things. We are seeing quite a lot of gains. We just need time to bring those in the form of upgrades on the car."
At the root of Leclerc's optimism is team principal Frédéric Vasseur. The Frenchman was Leclerc's team principal when he made his F1 debut with Sauber in 2018 and they joined forces again when Vasseur was appointed as Mattia Binotto's successor following the disappointment of Ferrari's 2022 season.
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It was always unlikely the team would challenge for titles immediately in 2023, but Leclerc believes progress during that season laid the foundations for what is to come. He applauds Vasseur's reluctance to make sweeping changes and instead focus on the small tweaks that can result in big gains.
"When [Vasseur] arrived in the team, I think it would have been an easy mistake to see things are going wrong and think, 'Oh, my God, [everything has to change],'" Leclerc says. "I mean, when you arrive within a team, and we weren't in the strongest form when he got here, it's quite easy to think that many things are wrong.
"But in Formula 1, when you speak about two tenths of a second over a lap, it's such fine details. And Ferrari is doing so many things right. There are a few things that we are doing less good than our competitors, which at the end makes a difference on track, but [Vasseur] straight away understood it.
"And it's not about doing a huge change. It's about extracting a little more out of every person to make sure that everybody is super motivated and onboard the project, and that's where [Vasseur] has made the difference. It's to bring people alongside him and make sure that they are fully in it, fully aligned with his vision, and fully motivated. And only that -- it's a small change, but that makes a huge difference."
Leclerc now believes the path is set for consistent progress, which he hopes can outstrip that of rivals McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes.
"The goal is to always make it better, so I would say that '25 will be good, '26 will be better and '27 will be even better and we optimise everything," Leclerc says. "But as I said, it's all relative. Everybody within the paddock, there is not one team that is getting worse from one year to the other, but it's how much of a step forward the others have done.
"So it all really depends on others as well, but on our side, I have zero doubts that we will make a step forward next year and another one the year after, but then I don't know what the others will do."
Going up against Hamilton
One certainty for 2025 is that Leclerc will have to beat the most successful driver of all time in the same car if he is to win the title. At the start of the year, Ferrari shocked the F1 world by announcing Hamilton would leave Mercedes and join Leclerc from 2025 on a multi-year deal.
While Leclerc's single-lap performance and increasingly impressive race craft promises to rival that of his incoming teammate, there is no shying from the fact that he is currently a seven-time race winner and Hamilton is a seven-time world champion.
"I will be super curious to see what he has done right for all his career to have had all the success that he's had," Leclerc says of Hamilton. "He has very little weaknesses, well actually, I don't know any weaknesses of Lewis' -- he's a super strong driver, always there, super fast, super consistent.
"So for me it is going to be very interesting to be able to actually look at the data and know that whatever he does I can do, because we have the same car. Right now, yes, you learn from other drivers, but when I look at his data [in the Mercedes] and he is much faster in one corner, you still have the doubt of whether my car is capable of doing what he does, but next year there won't be this question mark anymore.
"So it will be a huge ... it will be super interesting for me to learn from Lewis as much as showing what I am capable of in the same car as Lewis. These two things motivate me a lot."
Leclerc has known Hamilton for several years, but the two have found themselves spending more time together since the news broke that they would be teammates. They have found plenty in common -- from dog ownership to an interest in fashion -- and Leclerc expects a good relationship to develop next year.
"Actually since the announcement with Ferrari we spoke a lot more about our communal passion outside of racing rather than racing itself," Leclerc says. "It's cool, we have a very good relationship and I'm sure it will stay that way.
"I have never had a bad relationship with my teammate, and even though I am sure it is going to be a competitive battle, we are here to work for Ferrari and in this there are no doubts. He is a huge professional, I have so much respect for him, and we already have a really good relationship."
Out of respect for his 2025 teammate, Leclerc is unwilling to discuss the prospect of beating Hamilton, but doing so would undoubtedly be a huge deal. His Ferrari teammates to date have included four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, who the Monegasque bested in 2019 and 2020, and current teammate Sainz, who he lost out to in their first year together but has held the edge over since.
Perhaps it's that success that breeds his inner confidence, but Leclerc genuinely seems to welcome a strong rival in the garage next door.
"Since I got into Formula 1, I have been very lucky, and instead of thinking that I wish I had a No. 2 driver as a teammate, I have always thought it is so much better to have the best as your teammate," he says. "With Carlos, with Seb, with Lewis, I have had the very, very fastest that have pushed me forward, and with Lewis I will learn as well a lot."
While Leclerc firmly believes Ferrari is ready to win again and is curious about the challenge of facing Hamilton, he refuses to get ahead of himself. Much like the progress Vasseur has set in motion at the team, he is focusing on small gains in his own approach to yield the ultimate goal.
"I don't really think about what are the expectations," Leclerc adds. "Because, for me, I have just got to focus on what I have to do. I always like to focus a lot more on the process to try and achieve great things instead of thinking about the great things and then thinking about the process."