Charles Leclerc has answered the question hanging over Ferrari’s final weeks of the season. Asked ahead of Sunday’s United States Grand Prix whether the imminent birth of his first child could keep him out of a race, the 29-year-old Monegasque said he is planning to be on the grid every weekend to the finish.
“No, I don’t think I’ll miss a race,” he told reporters at the Circuit of the Americas, in comments reported by Crash.net. “I’ll do absolutely everything to be at home as much as possible in between those races. So, I might arrive a little bit late. I will be doing the races on Sunday.”
Leclerc and his wife Alexandra Saint Mleux, whose pregnancy became public after her Hungarian Grand Prix appearance in August, are expecting their first child in the coming weeks.
From Austin to Abu Dhabi
The timing could hardly be tighter. Five grands prix sit between Austin and the end of the year, taking the paddock to Mexico City, São Paulo, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi over six weeks. Three of them, Las Vegas on Saturday 21 November, Qatar on 29 November and Abu Dhabi on 6 December, come on consecutive weekends after a short mid-November gap, according to the official 2026 calendar.
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That window makes long detours home to Monaco difficult. Leclerc’s answer in Austin suggests he intends to compress every spare day in the schedule into time at home rather than take a weekend off.
444 points and the chase for a win
Leclerc’s team sits second in the constructors’ championship on 444 points, trailing a dominant Mercedes on 578 and holding a 105-point cushion over McLaren. For the driver, that gap is not where his satisfaction lies.
“Second place in the Constructors’ Championship isn’t something I really care about,” he said in Austin, as cited by Crash.net. “A much bigger satisfaction would be for us to be able to fight for wins and actually win races before the end of the year.”
Earlier this month at the Singapore Grand Prix, Leclerc had already struck a softer tone about what is coming. He told Gpfans he was “really looking forward” to becoming a parent, and described the prospect of fatherhood as something very special while adding that his wife, absent from the Marina Bay weekend, was following the weekend from home.
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Austin on Friday, then five more weekends
The United States Grand Prix starts at the Circuit of the Americas on Sunday afternoon local time, with Leclerc and Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton on track from Friday practice and sprint qualifying ahead of the main race.
After Austin, Ferrari and Leclerc have five more weekends to turn his end-of-season priority, winning races, into a result. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on 6 December closes the schedule.
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