Charles Leclerc’s mental coach admits he was ‘copy and pasting’ Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari setup

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Charles Leclerc was on a path to becoming Ferrari’s ‘second driver’ behind Lewis Hamilton before changing his philosophy at the British Grand Prix, his mental coach says.

Leclerc’s victory at Silverstone was his first since the 2024 United States GP, 37 races ago. Ferrari had only won twice in that time, but the Monegasque arrived in the UK after one of his toughest runs in red.

Hamilton was threatening to make the team his own, having outscored Leclerc 84-30 in the span of five weekends.

Charles Leclerc was ‘going down the wrong path’ at Ferrari

Leclerc admitted during the Silverstone weekend that he had been trying to ‘reproduce what Lewis is doing, because it’s clearly working’. This included switching from Brembo brake discs to Carbon Industrie, something Hamilton had done earlier in the season.

“This is never the solution for someone who wants to be a winner. It can be fine for someone who’s content to be a second driver,” Leclerc’s longtime mental coach Riccardo Ceccarelli told the Italian edition of Motorsport.com.

Charles Leclerc has never won more than three Grands Prix in a season 🏆 Predict how many he will take in 2026?

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However, Leclerc came to realise that he needed to stay true to his own driving style, even if it wasn’t an automatic fit for the SF-26.

“Charles definitely did the right thing because he was going down the wrong path,” said Ceccarelli.

“Watching what others do can always be an inspiration to broaden your mind; it doesn’t have to be the path you follow. Going back led him to victory.”

Leclerc remains 39 points behind Hamilton, who finished third at Silverstone, but his win dispels talk of Ferrari prioritising the British driver in their pursuit of Mercedes.

• READ MORE: Martin Brundle says Ferrari told him real reason Charles Leclerc was struggling vs Lewis Hamilton

Ceccarelli added: “They’ll be competing on equal terms: Hamilton has been more consistent so far and has more points, but they’ll compete because they’re equally matched; I don’t think one is superior to the other.

“It’ll be the small circumstances, the little details that will make the difference. They both feel like leaders: every now and then you can snoop on what your teammate is doing in the other garage, but if you copy and paste his setup, you’ve accepted being a second driver. And that’s not Charles-like.”

Intriguingly, Hamilton claimed some credit for Leclerc’s success, suggesting that the Monegasque had pursued the same setup direction after the Sprint. The two Ferrari drivers gave very different accounts as a genuine rivalry finally begins to develop.