Exciting rookie Charles Leclerc admits he is still adjusting to life in Formula 1 with the jump from F2 proving much bigger than he expected.
The Sauber driver is enjoying a strong run of form with four consecutive Q2 appearances in qualifying and has converted those into eventual points finishes on three occasions, including a P10 last time out in Canada.
Despite already earning the praise of many of his peers with his performances, the young Monegasque says his approach doesn’t allow him to feel settled at a certain level.
“I’m not someone that always feels confident about himself,” he claimed before this weekend’s French GP.
“Okay they are good results. But after every race I always try to find a negative about myself and try to improve them. I’m always trying to improve – and I think that’s also a strength.”
It was the 20-year-old Ferrari junior’s comments about the step up from F2, where he dominated in 2017, to the highest pinnacle in motorsport that were most interesting, however.
“Even being in this sport since I was three, I did not expect that jump to be so big,” Leclerc acknowledged. “You need to learn how to work with so many people, and for me that was quite difficult in the beginning.
“In F2 you are only speaking to one person, which is your engineer. But here you have so many people that are taking care of smaller areas than you have in F2. That takes a little bit of time to get used to.”
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That is why, he believes, it took him a few races to find his bearings in F1 before going on to score his good run of results.
“The goal is the same, to do the best job possible in the car,” he stated. “It was difficult for me at the beginning, maybe what I would have wished is to understand the car a bit quicker.
“If I could have changed something, that’s the thing I would have changed,” he added. “But two races, let’s say three races, to learn completely the car is not huge.”