F1 Driver Charles Leclerc Shares His Wellness Secrets With <em>Harper’s Bazaar</em>

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Formula 1 has a funny kind of cultural moment right now — massive enough to produce the highest-grossing sports film of all time, niche enough that a driver can still seem genuinely surprised when a journalist admits to being a fan. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari's 28-year-old star and one of the most recognizable faces on the grid, occupies that contradiction effortlessly. He's also, as of this year, a L'Oréal Paris global brand ambassador — and according to Harper's Bazaar, the role fits more naturally than most celebrity partnerships tend to.

The reason is almost disarmingly simple: his mother is a hairdresser. Leclerc grew up in a household where L'Oréal products were a fixture, where his mom watched the brand's commercials with the focus of a professional, and where the local hair salon was essentially his after-school spot. She still cuts his hair today — no reference photos, no named styles, just decades of accumulated knowledge about what her son actually wants. (He did attempt the Justin Bieber curtains at 12. It did not go well.)

The Routine Behind the Helmet

Racing hundreds of miles per weekend under a helmet does a number on your hair and skin, which is apparently what pushed Leclerc toward an actual skincare regimen. His mornings run a full sequence — L'Oréal's Hydra Energetic cleanser, serum, moisturizer with SPF, eye cream — and his wife Alexandra added a nightly anti-aging cream to the lineup. He credits her without a trace of irony. Post-race hair recovery centers on hydration, specifically Elvive conditioner, because sweat plus helmet plus speed is not a great combination for moisture retention. The man is methodical.

What's more interesting than the product list is how Leclerc talks about self-worth — or rather, how he used to conflate it with his lap times. "Self-worth back in the day was very much linked to how my racing results were going, which was not a very healthy relationship," he told Harper's Bazaar. He's since reoriented around values and effort, not outcomes — which sounds like a press-friendly answer until you realize he's saying it about one of the most results-obsessed sports on earth. His other grounding mechanism is more tangible: his wife travels with him to most races, as does their dog, Leo, and getting back to the same people in a hotel room after a brutal day is, he says, what keeps him centered. When the interviewer offered that word — anchored — he immediately wished he'd used it himself.

His advice for anyone operating under sustained pressure is to ignore the noise, trust your instincts, and resist the modern compulsion to seek external validation before acting — which is either a very zen mindset or a very useful one for a man racing at 200 mph while 800 million people watch.

When the guy who drives Ferraris for a living credits his mom, his wife, and a good conditioner for keeping him sane, it's hard to argue with the formula.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.