Charles Leclerc will line up on pole position for the 2024 Monaco Grand Prix. It’s actually the third time he has pole position in his home race, and yet it hasn’t been a great success for him in the principality. Will this finally be the year where he breaks the dreaded Monaco Curse?
2017
Leclerc absolutely dominated his first and only season in Formula 2, though his home race went absolutely dreadful. He managed to secure pole position, though during the sprintrace he retired with electrical issues. Then a day later, during the feature race, he looked set to win the race by a landslide. That was until halfway through the race, when the team called him in for having a loose tyre. They managed to fix it but the damage had already been done: his suspension was damaged beyond repair. End of story for the hometown hero who was almost guaranteed the win.
2018
A year later, Leclerc has made it to F1 and drives for Sauber, making him only the fifth Monegasque F1 driver. His C37 was a pretty awful car so there was never a chance of him winning the race. Points are on the table though, especially with a qualifying position of fourteenth. He managed to climb up to twelfth when his brake disk suddenly calls it quits. The Sauber driver is unable to stop and crashes into Brendon Hartly at full speed, taking them both out of the race. Two years in a row where Leclerc doesn’t finish the race.
2019
By 2019, Leclerc had been picked up by Ferrari. He does a solid job in Q1 of qualifying and places sixth. The team figures that that will be more than enough and keeps the hometown hero in the pits to save his tyres and energy for the rest of qualifying. Big mistake. Everyone else suddenly improves massively, including teammate Sebastian Vettel who delivers the final blow to Leclerc and knocks him out in the first part of qualifying.
The race itself isn’t any better: while trying to fight his way up to the front, Leclerc taps the wall and punctures his tyre. He puts in a valiant effort to get back to the pitlane, but by that time his tyre is completely shredded. His floor sustained so much damage that the race is over yet again for the Monegasque driver.
2021
The 2020 race was canceled due to the pandemic, so Leclerc’s next chance is in 2021. This time he doesn’t DNF during the race, but that’s because he never even started the race to begin with. He had a massive crash in qualifying, though he did still get pole position. However, the team didn’t manage to fix everything that was damaged in the crash. The result is that his driveshaft breaks apart during the formation lap, and with no time left to fix it before the race start, it means that Leclerc is relegated to watching the race from the sidelines.
Bonus: Historical Grand Prix
A bonus episode in 2022. At a special historical event - which is often held before the Monaco Grand Prix - Leclerc is invited to drive the Ferrari 312B that won Niki Lauda his first title back in 1974. It’s only a demonstration run, so there shouldn’t be that much that can go wrong. Sadly, it did. Leclerc loses control of the car going into the hairpin at Rascasse, planting the car into the wall and damaging the rear wing. It meant that yet again, Leclerc couldn't finish an event in front of his own home crowd.
When you thought you already had all the bad luck of the world in Monaco and you lose the brakes into rascasse with one of the most iconic historical Ferrari Formula 1 car. 🙃🔫
— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) May 15, 2022
2022
The 2022 Monaco Grand Prix was yet another pole position start for Leclerc. At that point he was leading the championship, so this was a big moment. Sadly for him, it wasn’t meant to be. Not because of driver error or mechanical failure this time, but because of the team. Ferrari calls him in at an unusual moment, something that surprised Leclerc and apparently also surprised Ferrari. Because when Leclerc drives into the pits, his engineer frantically tells him to stay out. That’s because Ferrari was still working on the pitstop of teammate Carlos Sainz. The stop for Leclerc takes ages and when he comes back out again, he is stuck in traffic. Even though he does manage to finish the race - the first time he ever finished his home race - he ends up in fourth, right behind title rival Max Verstappen.
2023
A decent but not stellar qualifying in a year that was completely dominated by Red Bull. Leclerc qualified in third, but the FIA judged him to have impeded Lando Norris during qualifying. The punishment for that is a three place grid penalty, and since there’s no exceptions for hometown heroes, it meant that Leclerc started from sixth. It was also the position he finished in, leaving him yet again without a podium or victory in his home race.