- Villeneuve says Charles Leclerc never built Ferrari around himself, and Hamilton is exposing that now.
- Hamilton’s Barcelona win, his first for Ferrari, cut Antonelli’s championship lead to 41 points.
- Villeneuve says Ferrari must shift its full focus to Hamilton’s title bid against Mercedes.
Jacques Villeneuve believes Charles Leclerc is ill-equipped to handle Lewis Hamilton’s growing dominance at Ferrari. The former world champion made his assessment on Sky Sports’ The F1 Show podcast.
His comments followed Hamilton’s victory at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, which extended his advantage over Leclerc to 40 points in the drivers’ championship.
Hamilton won in Barcelona using a three-stop strategy that got the better of the Mercedes drivers on two-stop plans. A virtual safety car gave him a free pit stop at a key moment. He finished nearly 20 seconds clear of the field.
At 41, Hamilton became the oldest driver to win a grand prix since Jack Brabham in 1970. The result cut championship leader Kimi Antonelli’s advantage to 41 points. Antonelli, who leads for Mercedes, retired from the Barcelona race with an engine issue.
Hamilton’s grip on Ferrari tightens
Hamilton’s form has been building across recent rounds. He took 43 points from a possible 50 across his last two race weekends before and including Barcelona. That run included two consecutive second-place finishes followed by the win.
Villeneuve sees this trajectory as Hamilton doing what he has always done at any team he has joined. “Lewis knows how to win, and he knows what it takes,” Villeneuve said on the podcast.
“And if he gets a sniff of it, there won’t be any quarters. I think that’s where he can make the difference.”
Villeneuve also argued that Ferrari must now commit fully to Hamilton’s championship bid. “Ferrari has to focus on Lewis if they want a small chance of winning, so the decision is easy to make because Leclerc is quite far back,” he said. Leclerc sits fourth in the standings on 75 points, trailing Antonelli by 81.
Villeneuve’s case against Charles Leclerc
Villeneuve’s sharpest criticism was directed at what Leclerc has failed to do in his seven seasons at Maranello. Leclerc joined Ferrari in 2019 after a single year at Sauber. He was given a long-term contract immediately, on the basis of his raw speed alone.
Villeneuve questioned whether that early generosity served Leclerc well. “Leclerc had time to build the team around him, and he didn’t,” he said.
“Bear in mind how he came into Ferrari was after an average season at Sauber, and suddenly giving the huge mega contract, like a world champion contract. Maybe too much too soon?”
Leclerc has won eight races in those seven seasons. His strongest title challenge came in 2022, when he led the championship early before Ferrari’s strategy errors and reliability failures allowed Max Verstappen to pull clear. Villeneuve believes that pattern points to a deeper problem.
“He’s never really had to build anything around him,” Villeneuve said. “It was given, it was there. He was quick, and that was plenty because the perception was, that’s a car that cannot win a championship anyway.”
Villeneuve added that Leclerc kept pace with results that satisfied the team without ever reshaping the organisation around himself.
Hamilton, by contrast, spent much of the 2025 season struggling with the Ferrari. He finished behind Leclerc regularly. A change to his engineering team, further adjustments by team principal Fred Vasseur and the major regulation overhaul for 2026 collectively helped him find his footing.
That difficult period, Villeneuve argued, was Hamilton doing the necessary groundwork. “The minute Lewis woke up, the minute Lewis made that car and that team his own, and he’s going for it and doesn’t leave any quarter, Leclerc is not prepared for that,” he said.
A new contract, an uncomfortable reality
The backdrop to all of this is Leclerc’s recent contract extension with Ferrari. He signed the deal ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.
According to F1 Oversteer, his previous agreement was due to expire this season rather than in 2029 as had been widely assumed, which made the extension more of a necessity.
Villeneuve saw the timing as a source of internal tension rather than resolution. “Internally at Ferrari, they just re-signed Leclerc two races ago for what, the best contract ever? Lifetime contract,” he said.
“But who’s actually getting the points? Who’s going to the front? Lewis. So that will create a little bit of issues internally as well.”
Leclerc failed to score in Barcelona, his second consecutive retirement following a DNF in Monaco. Those results have left him 81 points behind Antonelli with 15 races remaining.
Vasseur has time to recalibrate, and the Monagasque driver has shown before that he can recover from difficult spells. But the question Ferrari must now answer is not whether Hamilton belongs at the front. It is whether Charles Leclerc can respond when his team-mate is no longer holding back.
