Charles Leclerc has shown a lot of potential since his Formula One debut with Sauber earlier this year. With Kimi Räikkönen rumored to be finishing up his last season this year, people have started to speculate that Leclerc could be in line to fill the empty seat. But would it happen?
Well, looking at the past 40 years of Ferrari hires, the odds are strongly against Leclerc. One of the perks of being a high budget team with a strong reputation is that you don’t need to take on young and inexperienced drivers. Ferrari fits that description and has more than enough money to hire experienced drivers, which has been the practice for decades.
Looking just at the drivers employed by Ferrari in the last four decades, there were only two instances were Ferrari hired a driver with less than 2 seasons of Formula One experience. The first was Gilles Villeneuve, who had raced just a single Formula One race before being hired fulltime at the team in 1978. The second was Stefan Johansson, who was hired to replace René Arnoux in 1985, despite having only 16 races to his name.
However, these two cases are rare and, on average, a driver needs to have 4 seasons of Formula One racing to make it to the team. Looking back at the past five Ferrari drivers only, the requirements have become even more strict, now requiring an average of 6 seasons. The most inexperienced driver of the last five was Felipe Massa, but even he had three seasons under his belt.
The unfortunate fact is that Charles Leclerc will likely miss his chance to be on Ferrari in Räikkönen packs his bags at the end of the season. He doesn’t come close to meeting Ferrari’s experience requirement and it’s extremely unlikely that Ferrari would break tradition now to hire a driver fresh out of their rookie season. If Räikkönen leaves, the team will need to hire a 2019 driver, which will leave the seat occupied for a long time.
The only way that Leclerc will have a shot at the Ferrari seat is if they hire Fernando Alonso – which is possible given his recent Formula One frustrations – for the few years that he has left in Formula One and then hire Leclerc.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
