Leclerc: I was intimidated when I joined Ferrari

Charles Leclerc

Leclerc: I was intimidated when I joined Ferrari

A big step-up in his career.

Martin Macdonald

Thursday 25 July 2019 20:00

Charles Leclerc admits to being “intimidated” when he first arrived at Ferrari from Alfa Romeo, as he initially tried to adapt to his new car rather than have it adapted to him.

After impressing with Sauber last year, Leclerc was promoted to the Scuderia in place of Kimi Raikkonen. It has taken him a while to get going in his new team, but is slowly starting to show the kind of form which made Ferrari take the chance on someone so young.

“I think before France, it was more myself that was adapting to the car,” said the Monegasque.

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“After that I think changed a little bit the approach, and I think I adapted the car a little bit which enabled to drive me a little bit more naturally, which helped me.

“Arriving in such a big team, when I arrived it was only my second year in Formula 1 and you are a little bit intimidated, I was a little bit intimidated and just to arrive and straight away say ‘I want this, this and this’ was not the way I wanted to start this relationship.

“So at first, I wanted to understand the car, try to adapt my driving as much as possible to the car.

“I think at one point I managed to do good things adapting my driving style but then I felt there was more performance by trying to put the car a little bit more into my direction and this has helped the performance a bit since then.”

The new Ferrari SF90 has been described as tough to get to grips with this season by by Leclerc and team-mate Sebastian Vettel, but the former says he is now not feeling understeer as much.

Race day.
📸: @calloalbanese pic.twitter.com/SzW6mTo7A5
— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) June 30, 2019

“To be completely honest on that point, I struggle or feel it less,” Leclerc continued.

“He’s complaining a little bit about entering stability which it doesn’t affect me as much. But yeah we are trying to… These are the weaknesses and we know them, and we are trying very hard to try and fix them as soon as possible.

“At the end I feel comfortable with the car, it has some weaknesses but in the end I think Seb has done very good races too, maybe he hasn’t been so lucky in the last few ones but I’m very sure soon he will be back on top, it’s just a matter of time.

“At the moment I just feel good in the car, happy with the car. As I said, we still need to be working, especially on our race pace and that is what we are doing to make improvements soon.”