Charles Leclerc opens up on heartbreaking lie he told dying father two days before passing
Charles Leclerc lost his father just before making it to Formula One.
Charles Leclerc has revealed that he was plagued with guilt after lying to his father, Herve, just days before his death in 2017. Herve died at the age of 54 after a long illness and narrowly missed out on watching his son secure back-to-back Formula Three and Formula Two titles.
Leclerc was months away from signing his first contract in Formula One with Sauber at the time of his father's death. However, the young Monegasque told his dad that he had already put pen to paper despite that not being strictly true.
It came to fruition a month later, with Leclerc being snapped up by Sauber before he was promoted to Ferrari the following year. Reflecting on the lie he told his father before his death, Leclerc admitted that it haunted him for weeks before his place on the F1 grid was finally confirmed.
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"Because he passed away a year before I got into Formula One, it was very difficult because I unfortunately hadn’t signed my Formula One contract, which was the ultimate goal for our family," said Leclerc during an appearance on the On Purpose podcast.
“I mean, Formula One is really where you want to get once you start a racing career. That’s where you want to be one day, but I had lied to him two days before he passed away and I told him: ‘Listen, I signed my Formula One contract’.
"The year was going well. I was quite confident that this would happen but I also knew it was a matter of days before he would pass away. And I remember that night, I said it to my mum and my mum was pretty angry with me, telling me: ‘You shouldn’t lie to your father’.
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"That stayed with me for months. Luckily, I signed my contract a month later. He wasn’t here anymore and then I found much more peace within myself because I told myself: ‘Okay, I didn’t lie to my father. I told him the truth, I anticipated things, everything is okay’.
"That was a really good moment because, as I said, Formula One is really the goal for every driver and it was difficult to accept that he would go away without knowing what was the rest, but I think he would be really proud."
Leclerc paid an emotional tribute to his father after winning the Monaco Grand Prix for the first time last weekend. It saw him become the first driver in almost a century to win his home race on the streets of Monte-Carlo, with Louis Chiron taking the chequered flag back in 1931.
