He should have been racing in the Monaco Grand Prix on the streets of his hometown, Monte Carlo, that very day. But even though the Formula 1 World Championship has temporarily ground to a halt, Charles Leclerc found a way of getting out on that uniquely memorable city circuit– at the wheel of a Ferrari SF90 Stradale.
It all started with a meeting. Or rather a Rendez-vous. Between Ferrari, Charles and the legendary French director Claude Lelouch, who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1967 for ‘A Man and A Woman’. As a result, at dawn on Sunday, May 24, on Monte-Carlo streets closed to traffic especially for the occasion, Lelouch shot ‘Le Grand Rendez-vous’, a modern take on his 1976 short film ‘C’etait un Rendez-vous’ in which a sports car raced through a deserted Parisian streetscape at high speed. The stars this time, however, were Leclerc and the Prancing Horse 1,000 CV production hybrid.
The finished film will be released in a few weeks’ time, but these photographs and the video of Charles talking about his experience, give a taste of what was most definitely an unforgettable day. Despite, as he himself jokes, the dawn start….