For Charles Leclerc, an upgrade that Ferrari played down to a degree completely transformed his F1 season. Leclerc’s 2023 was split into two parts either side of a change to Ferrari’s F1 car that turned around his form and fortune. Whether bitten by the traits of Ferraari’s unpredictable SF-23, or seeing his attacking style restrained by his and his team’s methods of taming the beast, Leclerc had some uncharacteristically ineffective weekends in the first two thirds of the season. That was compounded at times by circumstance rendering him a bit-part player, like Ferrari’s communications blunder in Monaco qualifying, sacrificing his race to support team-mate Carlos Sainz’s victory bid in Singapore, or a luckless failure that caused a formation lap crash in Brazil. But it was the car itself that caused Leclerc the biggest problems. And it wasn’t until the final third of the year when Ferrari was really able to let him tap into his full talent on a consistent basis. 00:00 Leclerc's fal