English senior performance engineer working for Scuderia Ferrari, Jock Clear, discussed the strengths of Charles Leclerc, pointing out that the Monegasque driver is ready to challenge for the title once Ferrari cand deliver a strong car:
What impresses you the most about Charles Charles?
Jock Clear: “Mental strength certainly with Charles. He is quite astoundingly strong mentally. It is easy to forget, simply because he is who he is and has done what he has done in the last two – three years, it is easy to forget that coming to Ferrari as a Ferrari official driver at that age, that it is going to be intimidating. It was intimidating for Sebastian Vettel when he came with four world championships. That is intimidating stuff. And how Charles carried himself, pretty much from the first day, there are times when he hasn’t been the quickest driver, there are times when he struggled at races, where he chewed through his tyres twice as quickly as his teammate. It’s not just as long as he is quick. He is super quick and we have seen how good of qualifier he is. I think qualifying is a good example of mental strength. And the fact that he is quick in qualifying is another manifestation of his mental strength. But all sorts of behind the scenes conversation, and stresses that he has been under, I am really really impressed at how little they impact him come Sunday afternoon.”
If Scuderia Ferrari can deliver a championship winning car in 2022, is Charles ready?
Jock Clear: “My initial reaction to this is: god yes, he is absolutely ready. Absolutely ready. You have to balance that with there is no substitute for actually being in that position where (oh my god I could actually win the championship here). That is a different kind of pressure. But all I can say at the moment, he is managed and coped with every other level of pressure so far. And yeah he made mistakes, people that might be listening will say that he made lots of mistakes in his first year, and yes he did, but all drivers are going to make mistakes. We know very well Max made lots of mistakes in his earlier career. But nobody is telling me that Max is not ready to win the championship. All I am saying is, so far he has met every challenge and been up for it, been strong to move forward from those mistakes. And as such if you are in a position, where you are going to challenge for a championship, it’s going to be against Max, against Lewis, it’s going to be tough. You are going to slip up, you are going to make a mistake, you going to drop some points. Will Charles cope with it? Yes, he absolutely will. He is not going to crumble. When he drops it in quali and has to start from P13 or whatever, he just swallows it and in the next race he comes back and puts it on pole.”
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