It’s a sticky, airless day in Yas Marina, a 45-minute drive from downtown Abu Dhabi, a city whose skyline glitters with the UAE’s eye-popping billion-dollar architectural ambition.

Since the inaugural Grand Prix here in 2009, this race has joined Monaco and Singapore as the magnet for mega money on the F1 calendar. Preposterous super-yachts bob cheek by jowl in Yas Marina, much of their human party cargo equally extravagantly proportioned.

The Yas Hotel straddles the circuit, at Turns 18 and 19, another spectacular edifice, but a place that fails in its primary function unless you’re one of the nocturnal party animals who treat sleep like an allergen. “You’re staying there?” Charles Leclerc asks wide-eyed. “I was warned against it, by Fernando actually. He stayed there a few years ago, and barely slept all weekend.”

He’s a little weary himself, he says, as we wander out of his hotel towards the waiting blood-red Alfa Romeo Stelvio QV. It’s been a long season, and the F1 circus is ready for a break. Even its rookie star. It’s no distance to the track, but it’s a funny thing chauffeuring a driver many reckon could be Ferrari’s next champion. We’re not really meant to bring up the ‘F’ word, but the elephant’s in the room and it’s big and red. We’ll circle back there later; for now, TG has been given privileged access in this last race weekend before the Scuderia force-field is fully erected.

The future champion wears his promise lightly. I spent a day with him in Portofino a year or more ago, when the wheels were already turning and the Sauber-Alfa Romeo drive was 95 per cent in the bag. He’d driven over alone from Monaco for the shoot, and was by some margin the most relaxed, gracious, and insightful young racing protégé I’ve ever met. Funny, too. Leclerc has an aura, no doubt about it, acts like he knows something maybe you don’t, but without a trace of superiority or impatience.

“It’s helped me to know a lot of different nationalities,” he says of this peripatetic existence. “Actually, there are some similarities between the English and the Swiss. They are extremely pointy, by which I mean they look at every detail – they’re very strict with everything. Without going into all the differences, it has helped me grow as a driver. And to learn the politics.”

Ferrari’s intervention brought with it not just top-level driver coaching but access to the best simulators, physicians – the rigmarole of the top-flight racing existence bankrolled by the biggest name in the game. The Academy’s young guns (including Giuliano Alesi and Enzo Fittipaldi) train together and even co-habit, something that calls to mind Professor Xavier’s X-Mansion in the X-Men. Part of the programme sees the drivers wearing an apparatus that measures their neural activity while doing a race simulation. (This even sounds like Xavier’s mutant-networking Cerebro.) Then they’re told to repeat the feat using less and less mental energy. Incredible.

“Before I started doing it, I’d think I was concentrating 100 per cent and then you look at the graph and you’re not at all,” Leclerc says. “It’s telemetry for your brain. Not of what you are thinking, luckily, but they know whether you are anxious, relaxed, too relaxed. It’s about finding a balance. We’re all different, but I think I found my setting, a compromise between concentration, relaxation and the adrenaline you get in the car. You’ve got to find it and manage it again to be in the best mental state for quali or the race… it’s different for these two situations.”

Leclerc, however, refuses to see it as anything particularly special. “It was difficult, because whatever I have done to train myself mentally could never prepare you for losing a father. I tried to deal with it in the best way I could. I asked myself what my father would have wanted if he had been there, and the answer I came up with very quickly was to do well. It was impossible to reset, but I tried to focus on the weekend, to get a good result for him. In every important step that has happened since he has gone, I wish he was here to see it. I think about him every day. But I’m pretty sure he’s watching.”

“I have serious problems saying anything positive about myself,” he continues, “because I just want to get better than I am now. So, saying that I have talent is something that is just impossible for me.”

Fred Vasseur, Sauber-Alfa Romeo F1 team boss, has known Leclerc since his formative years. Having run Nico Rosberg in the ART GP2 squad in 2005, and some guy called Lewis Hamilton in 2006 (whatever happened to him?), this is a man who can unpick talent forensically, even if his current driver won’t. Preternatural speed is just the start of it.

“Being fast is the purpose of the whole business. These are 20 of the best drivers in the world, so of course they are fast,” he says. “Charles has the skills to be a real leader of a team. What you can compare [with other great drivers] is the approach, the way they deal with issues that arise, and so far Charles is a very strong competitor. He’s very charismatic, and he’s able to bring the team along with him. In F1, when you have 1,000 people around you, it’s not easy to motivate all the mechanics and engineers – it’s a huge skill.

“I would love to see him flourish. But I also know the most difficult step is not the first one. It’s the next one that counts. You can do whatever you want up to this point, but if you f**k up the next one… His move to Ferrari means that collectively we did a good job. It’s part of our mission, but, of course, it’s a bit frustrating to see him go.”

No kidding. Leclerc took his time getting to grips with the car, but amidst the chaos of a brilliant Azerbaijan Grand Prix, you might have missed a lone Sauber-Alfa Romeo picking its way through the debris and shattered egos to a sixth-place finish. From then on, his progress has followed the sort of pattern set by the likes of Alonso, Schumacher and Senna, even if direct comparisons are impossible to make. Let’s just say he outperformed his car – although the C37 evolved into an extremely impressive machine – and his team-mate. F1 noticed.

The late Sergio Marchionne decreed that the time was right to promote him to a Ferrari race seat, a decision that might have been derailed by internal politicking following the CEO’s untimely passing in July, and Kimi Räikkönen’s mercurial yet ultimately consistent performances. It adds yet more tension to the move. As it is, Leclerc will be the youngest Scuderia Ferrari driver since Ricardo Rodríguez drove for the squad in the 1961 Italian GP. It’s partly preparation for the next era, in parallel with the arrival of George Russell, Lando Norris and the growing might of Max Verstappen, but also surely sends the sort of signal to Sebastian Vettel that Enzo Ferrari himself, the self-styled ‘agitator of men’, would have sanctioned. Yet Leclerc somehow glides past it all.

I mention Vasseur’s observations to him. “In the teams I’ve been in, I’ve integrated quickly. I think I’m honest with the people I work with, and hopefully they like me. It was a challenge in F1 because there are so many people it’s difficult to build a close relationship with everyone.”

Is he too young?

“No. Experience is a big thing in F1, but when it comes to speed, you either have it or you don’t. If I don’t have it next year, they won’t wait for me to find it. If I do, well it’s proof.”

I ask him about the sport’s notorious politics.

“To be honest, I’ve been warned a lot about it in F1. And I’ve been surprised since I arrived here, although it’s a small team, so maybe that’s helped, but there was no politics this year. For now, I’ve been impressed.”

Leclerc finishes seventh in the race, after outflanking Daniel Ricciardo in the opening laps. Seventh, in fact, is almost disappointing. Two days later, he tops the timing sheets after testing 2019’s Pirellis in his Ferrari.

The stage is set.

- Jason Barlow