RELENTLESS ATTACKING
F1’s aero-heavy but varied machinery may not produce the kind of spectacular racing often seen on the grand prix support bill, and Sauber has been the championship’s de facto backmarker since Manor’s demise, but Leclerc is unlikely to give anything less than his maximum, all of the time. As if a Ferrarisupported emerging superstar with backto-back junior titles would ever do otherwise.
Leclerc’s default attacking mode was on full display during his F2 campaign, as evidenced by his Bahrain sprint-race win, and back-of-thegrid charges in Hungary and Italy. In 2006, and then working for ART Grand Prix, Capietto saw the same attitude in another rookie second-tier champion: Lewis Hamilton.
“They are strong characters,” he explains. “They always [come back], when there is something. Like when we were disqualified from some races, [Leclerc] always came back very strong. Even starting from the back he pushed – and I remember this also from Lewis. In Turkey he did a spin in race two, so he was last, and he came back to P2 driving, like, one second quicker than he was doing before. [Leclerc] is able to do the same – when we started last in Budapest, he came back to P4, producing a very strong race and lap times.
“I also must say the ability to put your car in the right position in the race to overtake is something that both have and that is at quite a high level.”
At times last season, Leclerc’s performances were almost Playstation-esque – that drive from the back in Hungary (somewhat aided by a late-race safety car) makes excellent repeat viewing. But he’s sensibly setting realistic performance targets ahead of his F1 debut.
“In F1 you can only put the target of giving the best of yourself in the car, and that’s what I will do in 2018,” he says. “For the results, it’s quite hard to predict anything in F1 and the target will be to improve the car during the year and then see where we finish at the end of the year. But then obviously I will have to give my best in the car and this is the most important [thing] to me. In a way, the goal doesn’t change, but what you can expect before a season is a bit different because in F1 it’s quite hard to expect anything before you actually put the car down on track.”