Inside the paddock there is a figure that not many know, yet this engineer has reached the milestone of 550 Grands Prix alongside the Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team.
We are talking of course about Beat Zehnder, sports director of the Italian-Swiss team, as well as one of its pillars, having worked for them since 1993, the year the team was founded. In his long career he has therefore met various young talents ready to flourish, from Kimi Raikkonen to Felipe Massa, Sebastian Vettel and, more recently, Charles Leclerc. And it is precisely the young Monegasque who is at the center of several compliments bestowed during an interview with RacingNews365.
“Charles Leclerc is very talented, he is the closest to perfection that I have ever worked with,” said Beat Zehnder. “Just observe his desire to understand the sport, even in its more technical side, and his capacity for self-criticism, which sometimes becomes a bit too much. For me this is the difference between him and other drivers: he blames himself first, doesn’t make excuses.”
The Alfa Romeo engineer knows Charles Leclerc well, having worked with him from 2017 to 2019, the year in which Kimi Raikkonen made his return to Sauber, the team that launched him in Formula 1 two decades ago. The current Alfa Romeo sporting director also wanted to share some words of appreciation for the Finn, describing him as “pure driving talent”. “Kimi is very fast, he could drive any car in a short time, without dwelling too much on the setup,” explained Beat Zehnder.
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Having spent a lot of time with the Finnish champion, the sporting director has often come to terms with Kimi Raikkonen’s “chilly” and relaxed personality. From the ice cream in Malaysia during a monsoon or the party on the yacht in Monaco after a retirement, there are many amusing stories about Ice Man, to which the Swiss adds one more: “In his first race in Melbourne nobody could find Kimi ten minutes before the opening of the pit lane for the warm-up laps. He was sleeping under a table covered with a sheet. When we told him he had seven minutes to get ready, he just asked to let him rest for the next three or four minutes.” – he recalled.
The Alfo Romeo team manager then continued to look back on his time working with Charles Leclerc: “For the first time in a long time, we had a very special driver with a very special attitude. I’ve never seen a driver like Charles Leclerc before. I’ve always said that for me, from his speed, he is Kimi Raikkonen and from his working attitude, he is probably Michael [Schumacher]. Give Charles a good car and he is going to be world champion, definitely.” – Beat Zehnder concluded.
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