F1: How dominant Charles Leclerc galvanised Ferrari to become title front-runner

As Charles Leclerc emerged victorious from Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, it seemed as if virtually every member of the Ferrari team on the ground in Melbourne wanted their moment with him.

The 24-year-old appears to have galvanised the team in a way not seen since Michael Schumacher’s heyday, and in a manner never quite achieved by Fernando Alonso and, more recently, Sebastian Vettel.

At Albert Park, the story of the season rapidly switched from a head-to-head between Leclerc and Max Verstappen to simply Leclerc being the standalone dominant force.

Ferrari fans have seen too many false dawns to get too carried away, and the Monegasque was quick to point out this was just three grands prix into a marathon 23-race season.

But his margin of victory was 20sec and, even before Verstappen’s retirement, the Dutchman could not get close to a car that was not expected to be the quickest in Melbourne.

Leclerc has long been talked about as a future world champion, but only now does he have the machinery to make that a possibility.

He had already turned heads on his debut season in the sport with Sauber, and even more so a year on, in 2019, when he won the Belgian Grand Prix, followed in quick succession by Ferrari’s home race at Monza at the next race weekend. Since then, the adulation from the Ferrari fans has been complete.

There was the nadir of 2020 to contend with, when Ferrari had a pig of a car, followed by the pain of watching Mercedes and Red Bull battling it out last season. For a team who have so often misjudged their car in recent years, they look to have got everything right this time.

Unlike the Mercedes, the F1-75 is super-quick and, unlike the Red Bull, it is reliable. It also seems to have an adaptability from