The Charles Leclerc, Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari saga seems to have finally come to an end, with the young Sauber driver set to be announced as a 2019 Ferrari driver this week, as reported by Racer.
Sky Italy have reported that a meeting is scheduled for Thursday and the announcement is slated to take place on that day.
Leclerc has been highly impressive this season, securing 13 points and driving that Sauber admirably.
His driving skills and tenacity had caught the attention of Sergio Marchionne, who according to multiple reports had already agreed to a deal for the young driver for 2019.
However, Marchionne’s sad demise meant that all contract negotiations were put on the hold, until a new Ferrari management took over.
In this transition phase, the new management wanted to keep things as simple as possible, and thus expressed their desire to keep Raikkonen at Ferrari for another year.
But the already agreed upon agreement with Leclerc proved to be a massive thorn, and the new management has finally given into it, so as to respect the deal made by late Sergio Marchionne.
The Ferrari President had reportedly already conveyed the news to Raikkonen before Monza, but Kimi’s record breaking lap during qualifying meant that Ferrari had to hold back the announcement.
With the Leclerc to Ferrari deal now done, Raikkonen is out of a seat for next year and while initial rumours suggested that Raikkonen could maybe move to McLaren, the Milton Keynes team has already announced their driver line up for 2019, consisiting of Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris.
Thus, this move might mean the end of Kimi Raikkonen in Formula 1(midfield teams won’t be able to afford the services of Kimi), a decision that wouldn’t go down well with Kimi fans, who feel that the Finn has had a very strong season and has put up some really impressive performances. O
But the move would come as a massive boost to Leclerc, whose dream of driving for Ferrari would come true at such a tender age.
How do you rate the move?
