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THE LITTLE PRINCIPALITY
To the world, Monaco is the jewel in the crown of Formula One. To Charles Leclerc, it's home. At the time of his birth at the Princess Grace Hospital on Thursday 16 October 1997, Ferrari flags fluttered on high-rise balcony railings throughout the principality. Michael Schumacher had just won the Japanese Grand Prix for the Italian marque, and F1 was just a week away from a memorable championship showdown between the German and Williams' Jacques Villeneuve. Schumacher had triumphed in the wet on these Riviera streets four months earlier; one of his most brilliant performances for the Scuderia to date. Monaco, and the sport as a whole, had gone Ferrari mad.
The inaugural Monaco Grand Prix was held in 1929 with the blessing of Prince Louis II, who saw it as an opportunity to put his tiny country on the map. He wanted it to be the most prestigious and profitable sub-square mile on the Mediterranean. Monaco also boasts the most famous casino in the world, the Beaux Arts Casino de Monte Carlo. James Bond visited twice, in Goldeneye and Never Say Never Again. It was built in 1865 to save the ruling House of Grimaldi from bankruptcy. To this day, the 8,000 Monégasques among the country's 40,000 residents are forbidden from entering the casino's gaming rooms. Monaco attracts wealthy blow-ins for its private banks and lack of income and estate tax, as well as a portfolio of fabulously glamorous hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, ruinously expensive nightclubs and a harbour crammed with mega-yachts that are collectively worth more than the GDP of Madagascar.
Monaco comprises nine individual districts, including the hill of Monte Carlo where one finds Casino Square; the rock of Monaco-Ville where the royal palace is located; and La Condamine, site of the racing pits and where the grand prix podium takes place. The apartments in Monte Carlo and beachside Larvotto, beyond the tunnel, fetch the highest prices, while almost all of the F1 drivers live in the quieter, more easy-going 1980s development of Fontvieille, built on land reclaimed from the sea, where there is a colourful marina and a handy heliport.
Since the early 1990s, most of the drivers on the F1 grid have chosen to live in Monaco. Arriving once they have secured their first big paycheque, usually a few years into their twenties, they are attracted to the weather, the transport links, the sports facilities, the cycling trails and, of course, the favourable tax status.
In contrast with the stylish surroundings, La Condamine is, architecturally, a hotch-potch of residential buildings and businesses, most of a post-war design that hasn't aged terribly well. You won't find any five-star hotels here.
La Condamine is home to the Leclercs. Monaco doesn't do blue-collar neighbourhoods, but if it did La Condamine would be it. This is where the working population of Monaco lives, as opposed to the millionaires and billionaires stretched out on the arms of the principality either side of Port Hercules. There are no Gucci or Graff stores in La Condamine. The focal point is the Place d'Armes, where there's a fruit and veg market and where the locals go to read their copies of Nice-Matin over an espresso or pastis. 'I don't live in the glamorous city that everyone sees during the Grand Prix,' explains Charles. 'It feels like a village to me. The people that are actually staying here the whole year are the real Monégasques, and we all know each other.'
Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc was born to parents Hervé and Pascale. Pascale works as a hairdresser in Fontvieille. Her clients include David Coulthard, who was racing for McLaren at the time of Charles' birth. Charles has an older brother, Lorenzo, who was born in 1989 and has gone on to become an investment banker, while younger brother Arthur came along in 2000. Back in 1955, Charles' maternal grandfather, Charles Manni, had founded a successful French manufacturing company producing plastic car parts, Mecaplast, which provided a comfortable life for his family. Today, Charles' uncle Thierry Manni runs the company, now known as the Novares Group, with revenues of ?1.2 billion per year. Nevertheless, Hervé and Pascale made their own way.
Like his father-in-law, Hervé worked in the plastics industry Monday to Friday, but dedicated much of his spare time to racing in French and European Formula 3 during the 1980s, when he was in his mid-twenties. However, he always struggled to come up with the funds necessary to secure a seat at this level, so his racing record was patchy; full season-long campaigns were rare, with a race here and a race there, driving the Volkswagen-powered Reynard 873 and 883 and the Alfa Romeo-powered Martini MK45 for low-budget teams. He competed on the streets of Monaco in 1986, 1987 and 1988, scoring eighth place on his last appearance. He recorded no wins during his racing career.
Charles' first memory of Formula One was watching the 2001 Monaco Grand Prix, aged four, from the balcony of a family friend who lived nine storeys above the Beau Rivage, with views of the track out of Turn One, the swimming pool section and the harbour. To occupy himself, Charles was given a miniature toy Ferrari to play with on the tiled floor.
On the circuit's start-finish straight is the bus stop from which he would travel to school. From kindergarten age through primary he attended the École de Fontvieille. Today, a portrait photo of Charles hangs on the wall of his old classroom. 'He's the pride of our school,' says headteacher Hélène Palmero, 'all the kids here would like to be Charles. I encouraged him to study by telling him these subjects would be useful once he became an F1 driver. Not that he really believed it . but I was fantasising. I was trying to motivate him.'
He first decided he wanted to become a racing driver when he was four, after he first witnessed the Monaco Grand Prix, and after he took a day off sick from school and accompanied his dad to a kart track owned by a friend. The Brignoles circuit was a couple of hours drive west of Monaco, in France's Var region. It was a flat, fast, sinuous track, professionally maintained by Philippe Bianchi, 38-year-old Hervé Leclerc's dearest mate. Philippe and his wife Christine had three kids, Melanie, Jules and Tom, and the two families were extremely close.
Tom was Charles' best friend, while twelve-year-old Jules was his godfather. Jules had been karting since he was three and was dynamite. The family were hoping that he might progress from karts to single-seater car racing; a leap so few youngsters are actually able to realise.
On little Charles' first experience of a kart he, too, took to it like a duck to water. Karting is the way every F1 driver starts, often when they are as young as three or four, and certainly before they hit double digits. Triple F1 world champion Ayrton Senna, who was killed in 1994's San Marino Grand Prix at the peak of his powers, described karting as 'the purest driving experience', preferring it even to F1. Senna was and remains a hero to Charles, both for his race craft and also his philanthropy.
Philippe pulled Charles around the track with a rope tied between their two karts, to make sure he understood the basics. After half a lap, it was clear he did. The tether was untied and off he went. 'Despite the fact that I was only four, this day is still in my memory,' Charles remembers. 'I was supposed to go to school that day. I wasn't a huge fan of school though, so I pretended to be sick when I heard that my father was going to Brignoles. Curiously, my dad was happy that I couldn't go to school. As soon as we arrived, I found myself in a kart. I came back from Brignoles dazzled, saying to my father that my future was clear: I will be a Formula One driver.'
On Wednesdays in Fontvieille, the school children were allowed into the nearby Louis II Stadium to play games on the hallowed turf of football club AS Monaco. Charles tried all sorts of sports. He enjoyed them, but he got bored quickly. This wasn't true of motor sport, however. By age eight, Charles was ready to race, and his godfather, who was now sixteen and edging closer to his own goals, agreed to be his mechanic. Such was their brotherly bond, Charles even began to unconsciously adopt Jules' mannerisms. In his first season of racing, he won the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regional championship, a title he held on to for four years. But his dad halted any chance of it going to his head. 'When you're seven years old and you win two races in a row, you think you're unbeatable,' Leclerc says. 'My father told me to always be humble, even in good moments, and especially when you feel you are unbeatable.'
'I've always said,' recalled Philippe Bianchi, 'that "the look" is the most important thing for a future driver, especially when the helmet is on. I've always seen this spark in Charles' eyes just like in Jules'. A focused boy, motivated, sure about what he wanted, paying close attention to everything we were saying about him. Sometimes we had to say to his father that he needs to cool down and take it step by step, because every step is important. I found in Charles all the qualities I'd identified in Jules some years before. That's why they have a similar path.'
But their weekends at Brignoles, amid the smell of two-stroke oil and barbeque, were always relaxed....
