Formula 1: Will Charles Leclerc be a championship contender in 2019?

Charles Leclerc is set to drive for Scuderia Ferrari in the 2019 Formula 1 season. Will he be a championship contender next year?

Charles Leclerc has experienced a very successful rookie Formula 1 season driving for Alfa Romeo Sauber. In 17 starts, he has racked up 21 points on seven top 10 finishes, including a career-high sixth place finish in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, and he sits in 15th place out of 20 drivers in the driver standings.

This is the case despite the fact that Sauber sit in ninth out of 10 teams in the constructor standings. The season that the 20-year-old Monegasque has had has been nothing short of spectacular by the standards team.

Since the 2013 season when Nico Hulkenberg drove for the Swiss team and scored 51 points on 10 top 10 finishes en route to a 10th place finish in the driver standings, only Felipe Nasr has scored more points in a single season driving for the team than Leclerc has, and that still might change.

In the 2015 season, Nasr scored 27 points on six top 10 finishes en route to a 13th place finish in the driver standings. Since then, Sauber drivers not named Leclerc have combined to score just 13 points.

With four races remaining on the schedule this season, Leclerc could very well end up scoring 27 points, and a 13th place finish in the driver standings may not be out of reach.

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The success that the 2016 GP3 Series and 2017 Formula 2 champion has had this year played a huge role in him landing a ride with Scuderia Ferrari as the replacement for 2007 Formula 1 champion Kimi Raikkonen beginning next season.

But will the fact that Ferrari junior driver is set to replace the 38-year-old Finn at one of Formula 1’s top teams be enough to make him a championship contender? This depends on why Ferrari made the decision to replace Raikkonen with Leclerc, and why they decided to do it ahead of the 2019 season as opposed to waiting for another season or two like many people expected them to.

After driving for Ferrari from the 2007 season through the 2009 season, Raikkonen returned to the Italian team in the 2014 season. Since then, he has been the team’s number two driver. In fact, since the team signed four-time Formula 1 champion Sebastian Vettel to replace two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso ahead of the 2015 season, Vettel has earned 13 victories while Raikkonen has not earned any.

However, this has been okay with Ferrari since Raikkonen has been a great team player. He has done what has been asked of him even though he hasn’t won a race driving for the team since he won the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix and even though it hasn’t resulted in the team winning a constructor championship or any of the team’s drivers winning a driver championship.

Will Leclerc play the same role that Raikkonen has? While it would be answer to assume he will with Vettel having signed a contract last summer to continue driving for Ferrari through at least the 2020 season, it is likely that he won’t. Why would Ferrari sign a different driver to play the role that Raikkonen has played so well? Why try to fix what isn’t broken?

A month or so ago, the answer may have been to protect against Leclerc being snagged by a team such as Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, which would have prevented him from driving Ferrari even in a couple of seasons.

But when Leclerc was signed by Ferrari, Red Bull Racing already had (and still have) two young drivers of their own under contract for several seasons, so they would have no use for Leclerc for at least a few years. By not signing Leclerc ahead of the 2019 season, they would not have risked him signing with another team.

With this in mind, Ferrari clearly have different plans for their young prospect than they had for Raikkonen. They didn’t just sign him to do what Raikkonen has done. There would be absolutely no point in that.

While Ferrari’s strategy with Raikkonen has worked as planned as far as being a team-based approach goes, it hasn’t worked in delivering them their first constructor championship since the 2008 season or their first driver championship since the 2007 season.

Ferrari believe that Leclerc will be a future world champion, and Leclerc is hungry to win. There is no reason for Ferrari to have him wait around as the team’s number two driver when he will likely compete for victories early and often next year, especially since this strategy hasn’t worked with Raikkonen as far as delivering the team a constructor championship or any of their drivers a driver championship, and there is no reason for him to want to do so.

Leclerc has already admitted that he is not going to Ferrari to learn and that his goal is to win the 2019 championship. He is fully capable of doing it, and Ferrari appear to be ready to give him that opportunity.

How will Charles Leclerc factor into the championship battle in the 2019 Formula 1 season? Will he be a championship contender right off the bat, or will it take him one or two seasons to get acclimated to driving for Ferrari before he starts competing for championships?