‘He might be that desperate to leave Ferrari’ - Leclerc tipped for shock switch

The Monegasque was left bewildered by Ferrari’s torrid weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix which saw him finish outside of the points and bemoan the Italian outfit for “doing something wrong”. 

Leclerc is contracted to Ferrari until the end of 2024 but Windsor would not be surprised to see the 25-year-old jump ship if the team continue to let him down. 

“The big figure there is Charles Leclerc,” Former Ferrari team manager Windsor said on his YouTube channel. “Without any doubt at all, the guy will be unbelievably frustrated and very annoyed.

“And he’ll be wanting either Ferrari to magically get their act together and the car to be really quick, or he’ll be thinking [about a move].

“He may even be thinking: ‘Alpine might be better than this lot in terms of my driving and doing what I know I can do. Look at them – top 10 every Q3 now.’

“He might be thinking like that. He might be that desperate.

“I’m not saying Alpine’s a massively bad thing to do – don’t take that out of context – all I’m saying is he might be that desperate to leave Ferrari.

“Now, it could well be that Ferrari are slowly, slowly gathering some traction and some pace and the next upgrades look like they’re going to be really efficient in the tunnel and Charles will be working around that.

“But I think the problem with Charles is that he’s not got massively good driver management around him, Jock Clear excepted – and I don’t know how much involvement Jock’s got now.

“I’m shocked that he wasn’t able to get the tyres to work in Barcelona and I’m shocked that they allowed him to make that mistake twice in Miami. And he wasn’t brilliant at Monaco.

“I think he’s the key there. Let’s say he left Ferrari and went to Alpine, that would be quite interesting, wouldn’t it?”

Windsor also believes George Russell and Carlos Sainz have reason to be more relaxed than their teammates at this stage of their respective careers. 

“I think George [Russell] will stay at Mercedes, for sure, and the only question there is how long Lewis will want to do it,” Windsor added. 

“And a bit like Charles, if Lewis still thinks there’s something around the corner that could potentially be really good, he’s not going to suddenly pack up and go. He’s going to think: ‘OK, ’23’s gone but ’24 is the big year.’

“If they do have a good car, that’s the beginning of his troubles because then he’s got George Russell to deal with and that’s not a great thing. That’s why George will never be in a Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen, for example.

“I think [Sainz] and George will be the most relaxed of those four [with] Lewis thinking, ‘If I’m not at Merc, I don’t really want to race.’ Probably. I can’t imagine him wanting to go to Ferrari really, unless it’s massive money.”