勒克莱尔谈续约法拉利前的"其他机会"
勒克莱尔在F1的Beyond the Grid播客节目中被问及是否认真考虑过离开法拉利，他表示自己很幸运拥有经纪人来处理这些事务。
夏尔·勒克莱尔在签署新法拉利合同之前，有哪些“其他机会”？
勒克莱尔谈到曾收到对手车队的接触邀请，但对这些车队究竟是谁仍保持含糊其辞。
每当法拉利和勒克莱尔同意延长双方的关系时，这条消息总是伴随着各种暗示，说勒克莱尔曾拒绝其他追求者，只为留在他真心所爱的车队。
“为此，我也很幸运能处在有经纪人帮我把关的位置上，”在F1官方播客《Beyond the Grid》最近一期节目中，当被问及他有多认真地考虑过离开法拉利的生活时，他这样说道。
“而且我的经纪人来到这里，是为了让我了解还有哪些其他机会，以及周围正在发生什么。所以我没有进行任何个人谈话，但我的经纪人谈了。”
“说实话，他的职责就是对我坦诚，向我完整呈现围场里正在发生的事情，以及我们可能有哪些机会。所以，是的，确实有其他机会。但最终，我们和法拉利坐下来谈，并且很快就达成了协议。”
如果说勒克莱尔与法拉利有着特殊的关系，那么他的经纪人托德也是如此：他是让的儿子，让曾是一名拉力赛领航员，先是主导了标致的拉力赛和耐力赛项目，随后在迈克尔·舒马赫时代带领法拉利走向世界霸主地位，之后转型进入政界，担任国际汽联主席十余年。小托德还长期管理着法拉利车手费利佩·马萨，并且至今仍负责詹姆斯·卡拉多的事务，后者曾随这支车队夺得勒芒冠军。他旗下拥有众多处于职业生涯不同阶段的车手，是围场中一位非常老练的操盘手。
但小托德在法拉利所享受到的、比其他任何地方都要多的，是能够直接与那些比车队领队更高层级的有影响力人物对话的机会——尽管他也是弗雷德里克·瓦塞尔的重要盟友，两人早在二十多年前就共同创立了ART GP车队。事实上，据悉托德在2023年1月促成前车队领队马蒂亚·比诺托下台、由瓦塞尔接任一事中发挥了关键作用。
勒克莱尔的经纪人尼古拉·托德（左）与法拉利车队领队弗雷德里克·瓦塞尔有着长期的职业合作关系。
拥有这样一位深度打入权力高层的经纪人，让勒克莱尔能够以“看似与自己无关”的方式得到他想要的东西，比如比诺托的下台——当时法拉利的复苏轨迹正出现重大摇摆——以及2024赛季初以颇为奇怪的方式将泽维尔·马尔科斯从勒克莱尔的比赛工程师位置上撤换。如果他转投另一支车队，就不会有这么大的影响力了。
同样，他的影响力不仅取决于自己的表现，还取决于他的市场价值。如果我们Motorsport.com意大利版的同行罗伯托·钦切罗所说的那样，法拉利已经把勒克莱尔锁进了一份合同“金色牢笼”里，那么以转投他队相威胁就不再是他可以打出的筹码了。
没有人怀疑勒克莱尔的速度或投入程度。可以说，他常常投入过度，尤其是在赛车不够好的时候。如果法拉利的赛车只达到领先赛车的90%或95%，夏尔就会试图用自己的方式、以冒险的形式来弥补差距。这就是为什么车迷（tifosi）们把他与吉尔·维尔纽夫放在心中同样崇高的位置。
在最近几个赛季中，勒克莱尔在法拉利之外的主要选择包括梅赛德斯、红牛和迈凯伦，这些车队的领军人物不得不权衡勒克莱尔能带来的性能收益，以及他的到来会打破车队内部平衡的问题。过去几年，尼古拉·托德肯定一直在频繁走访这些车队，但F1媒体往往在看到一名车手的经纪人出现在别家车队的房车里时就显得过于激动。
有时候，一次随意的闲聊就只是一次随意的闲聊。有时候，一笔交易可能确实正在进行中，尽管这种事情公开进行的可能性相当低。很多时候，这类会面被刻意安排在公开场合，纯粹是为了满足各方的议程：对车队领队来说，是为了向自己的车手表明他们手头还有其他选择；对经纪人来说，是为了表明他的客户在别处也受到了追捧。
今年，随着汉密尔顿推动法拉利支持他冲击世界冠军，勒克莱尔与汉密尔顿之间的关系开始变得紧张。
为了在2024年1月宣布刘易斯·汉密尔顿将于下赛季加盟时维持车队内部的平衡，法拉利同时也与勒克莱尔签下了一份长期合同，理论上附带选项可延续到2029年底，但据悉合同中还包含2026年的一个解约节点。就勒克莱尔而言，这是为了应对法拉利可能把新技术规则搞砸的情况。
相反，一幅更复杂的图景浮现出来：法拉利打造出了一辆有竞争力的赛车，并且能够通过升级为其增加性能——这在最近几年的过去并不总是如此。但它也在运作上出现了失误，错失了多次拿到更多积分的机会。
不过，其他领先车队中的局势也发生了变化。当勒克莱尔在2024年签下长期合同时，部分原因是托德知道汉密尔顿的转会即将到来，并曾接洽梅赛德斯，希望查尔斯能填补那个空缺。但当本赛季初解约条款进入视野时，梅赛德斯对当时的车手阵容非常满意。
迈凯伦也可以说同样的情况，据悉托德也与包括安德烈亚·斯特拉和扎克·布朗在内的领导层断断续续地进行过会谈。当托德在去年赛季末四处接洽时，迈凯伦有两名车手在争夺世界冠军。
据悉，阿斯顿·马丁也在去年年底发出了邀请，但那正值这支命运多舛的组织再度表现不佳、内部争斗不断的时候——新上任的技术管理合伙人阿德里安·纽维刚刚让董事总经理兼车队领队安迪·考威尔下台。在法拉利和一团糟之间做选择，勒克莱尔明智地选了第一扇门。
"我不想放弃我的终极目标，那就是和法拉利一起成为世界冠军，"勒克莱尔说。
"而且我相信这个项目。我相信车队的每一个人。
"我认为我们正处在一个不断展现创新的年份。我们在生产计划和带来的升级方面也非常激进。这让我对未来充满希望。
"而且瓦塞尔也是我再次续约的重要原因。我对瓦塞尔有百分之两百的信任。"
等下次他的合同需要续签时，勒克莱尔将年过30岁。到那时他还会像现在这样拥有这么多其他机会吗？
英文原文
What were Charles Leclerc's "other opportunities" before signing new Ferrari deal?
Charles Leclerc has spoken about receiving approaches from rival teams but remains coy about who they might actually be
Every time Ferrari and Charles Leclerc agree to extend their relationship, the news comes against a background of allusions to other suitors Charles has spurned to remain with his true love.
"For that, I'm also lucky to be in the position where I've got my manager," he said on a recent episode of F1's Beyond the Grid podcast when asked how seriously he had considered a life away from Ferrari.
"And my manager is here to let me know about what are the other opportunities, what's going on around. And so I didn't have any personal talks, but my manager did.
"I mean, it's his job to be honest with me and to give me the full picture of what's going on in the paddock and what opportunities we might have. So, yes, there were other opportunities. But at the end of the day, we sat down with Ferrari and we made it happen quite quickly."
If Leclerc has a special relationship with Ferrari, the same can be said of his manager, Todt: son of Jean, the former rally co-driver who masterminded Peugeot's rally and endurance programmes before leading Ferrari to world domination in the Michael Schumacher era, then shifted into politics as FIA president for over a decade. Todt Jr also managed long-time Ferrari driver Felipe Massa and still superintends the affairs of James Calado, a Le Mans winner with the Scuderia. He has a great many drivers on his books at all stages of the career ladder, and is a consummate player in the paddock.
But what Todt Jr enjoys to a greater extent at Ferrari than anywhere else is the ear of influential figures further up the food chain than the team principal – although he is a key ally of Frederic Vasseur, having co-founded the ART GP organisation with him over two decades ago. Indeed, it's understood that Todt was instrumental in the removal of former team principal Mattia Binotto and his replacement by Vasseur in January 2023.
Leclerc's manager Nicolas Todt (left) has a long professional relationship with Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur
Having a manager so plugged into the senior echelons of power enables Leclerc to get what he wants with plausible deniability, such as Binotto's departure at a time when Ferrari's recovery trajectory underwent a major wobble, and the peculiarly communicated removal of Xavier Marcos as Leclerc's race engineer early in the 2024 season. He would not have quite the same influence if he were to shift to another team.
Equally, his influence depends not just on his performance but also his market value. If Ferrari has Leclerc locked into a contractual "golden prison", as our Motorsport.com Italy colleague Roberto Chinchero puts it, then threatening to go elsewhere is no longer a lever he can pull.
Nobody doubts Leclerc's speed or commitment. Arguably he often over-commits, especially if the car isn't good enough. If the Ferrari is only 90% or 95% as good as the frontrunning car, Charles will try to make up the shortfall himself in the form of risk. That's why the Tifosi place him in the same rarefied space in their hearts as Gilles Villeneuve.
In recent seasons Leclerc's prime options outside Ferrari have been with Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren, whose leaders have had to weigh up the performance benefits Leclerc would bring against the change in equilibrium it would cause. Nicolas Todt has certainly been busy doing the rounds of those teams over the past couple of years, but there is a tendency in the F1 media to get rather too excited when a driver's manager is spotted in another team's motorhome.
Sometimes a casual chat is just a casual chat. Sometimes a deal may actually be in progress, though the likelihood of this happening in plain sight is quite low. Often such encounters are staged in public purely to suit each party's agendas: for the team principal, to show their drivers they have other options on the table; for the manager, to show his client has interest from elsewhere.
Relations between Leclerc and Hamilton have come under strain this year as Hamilton has pushed Ferrari to support his world championship challenge
To manage the internal equilibrium when it announced in January 2024 that Lewis Hamilton would be joining the following season, Ferrari also signed Leclerc to a long-term deal that theoretically reached until the end of 2029 with options, but which was also understood to have included a break point in 2026. On Leclerc's side this was to cover the possibility of Ferrari making a mess of the new technical regulations.
Instead, a more complex picture has emerged in which Ferrari has engineered a competitive car, and has been able to add performance to it in the form of upgrades – which hasn't always been true in the recent past. But it has also suffered operational misfires and blown several chances to score more points.
The dynamic in the other leading teams has also changed, though. When Leclerc signed up for the long term in 2024, this was partially because Todt knew Hamilton's move was coming, and had approached Mercedes with a view to Charles filling that vacancy. But when the break clause came into view early this season, Mercedes was perfectly happy with its line-up.
The same could be said of McLaren, where Todt is also understood to have held discussions on and off with leaders including Andrea Stella and Zak Brown. When Todt was doing the rounds late last season, McLaren had two drivers in contention for the world championship.
It's also understood that Aston Martin made an approach at the end of last year, but this was at a time of yet more underperformance and internal wrangling in that benighted organisation, when recently installed managing technical partner Adrian Newey had MD and team principal Andy Cowell ousted. Given a choice between Ferrari and a farrago, Leclerc wisely chose door number one.
"I don't want to give up on my ultimate goal, which is to become a world champion with Ferrari," Leclerc said.
"And I believe in the project. I believe in every single person of the team.
"I think we are in a year where we've been showing innovation. We are very aggressive also in the production plan and in the upgrades we are bringing. And that gives me lots of hopes for the future.
"And Fred is a big reason on why I have signed again as well. I believe in Fred 200%."
Next time his contract is up for renewal, Leclerc will be over 30. Will he still have as many other opportunities then?
Motorsport.com ·
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