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Leclerc thinks he's 'driving at a very high level' this season (Inteview video + Transcript)

Charles Leclerc joins TSN's Tim Hauraney to explain how good he feels about his performances so far this season, discuss if he feels he has the second-quickest car in Formula 1, if he thinks his car is more competitive when curb riding, and more.

TH: From the eye test, watching you drive this year, I've never seen you drive this good. Do you feel that these are some of your best performances? Like I know the car is not where you want it to be but from a driving perspective in a Grand Prix, aside from qualifying, do you feel like this is the best you have driven?

🆑: First of all, thank you. Yeah, I feel like I'm driving at a very high level. I'm with my performances this year. I think it's all about trying to improve years by years. So, do I feel stronger compared to last year? Yes, because with experience you get to know and understand different things then it can help you with the driving. So yeah, I do feel really good. Unfortunately for now, we don't quite have the car yet to win races but we are working towards that.

TH: As you get more experienced, what are those little things that one would have to chip away at or work on it as you go through a season?

🆑: I think the speed is not something that comes with experience. It's either you are fast or a bit less fast but it's not something that comes with experience. What definitely changed a lot for me was all that is around that. That's race craft, and the tyre management is something that is not something you have naturally. You've got to learn the hard way. You need to do mistakes, you need to destroy your tyres and have no tyres by lap 10 to try to understand what you have done wrong. And these are the kind of things that you learn little by little, years after years. And conditions are always changing so you know what's going to happen, when the rain is going to wet the track and then it's going to dry the track. That resets the grid for the track. But if you don't experience these kind of things, then you don't know so these come from experience. So on all of those different subjects, I've grown a lot. But I don't think the speed ever change.

TH: So we're done with the portion of the European leg, and the team has the second most points from that triple header. Do you feel that you have the second quickest car?

🆑: No, I don't. I think we are doing a really good job at putting everything and during this triple header especially, we did a good job at maximizing the car potential. I feel like all the teams maybe struggled a bit more to extract the maximum potential out of their car. I think Red Bull is in front, I think McLaren is definitely in front. And probably Red Bull then us with Mercedes. And Mercedes is a little bit more difficult to understand. I think they are a little bit up and down and they seem to have a bit opposite issue compared to us where they are very strong in qualifying and struggling in the race. We are struggling in qualifying and very fast in the race. I prefer it our way but we need to now understand what we are doing wrong in qualifying in order to have both sessions good.

TH: Watching you in Monaco this year was incredible but it did look that the car was good with kerb riding. Here in Montreal, at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, you will have to kerb ride, like I think you know… do you feel the car is more competitive when kerb striking or kerb riding compared to it not having that at other tracks?

🆑: I think Monaco is very, very extreme in that direction. I don't think here it's as extreme. So I think in Monaco we get a big benefit out of this, here the benefit might be smaller. But I hope it helps us to at least be closing the fight a little bit to the McLarens, but only time will tell. I think kerb riding is a big thing here, I think we've got a strong car on that. Whether it will make a difference in order to be fighting with the McLaren, I'm not sure it will be enough for here.

TH: Do you think the temperatures might help at all if it's a little cooler on the Saturday or the Sunday?

🆑: Yeah, this adds a little bit of yeah, like unexpected things because whenever the temperatures changes, then you need to re-adapt the car and then room for mistakes is bigger. I hope we'll get it right.

TH: About your dog. In Imola, I gotta try to remember this right. So in Imola, I believe there was a fan in the stands and she was holding a sign and there was like the pope's figure but it had your dog's head as its head. A lot of people spoil their dogs, that absolutely natural. Do you spoil Leo?

🆑: Yes, yes, very, very much. I think we kind of always say, that me and my girlfriend, we are very extreme. We love our dog, we love Leo and he is very spoiled. But I mean, he's amazing. He's amazing, we love him and he definitely changed our life for better. And we try and bring him whenever it's reasonable to bring him so whenever he can travel in the right condition, because obviously it puts quite a lot of stress on them whenever there's a lot of travels so we always try and do it in reasonable races. But we also try and bring him as often as possible because he's happy like that. He's great.

TH: Are you surprised how popular your dog is?

🆑: I am, I am. I'm mostly surprised like sometimes I walk with Leo and I can understand maybe people recognize me and then recognize Leo. They always mention Leo in the conversation. But now, like last time, my friend was walking Leo and he's not a celebrity or anything like that and he was getting stopped because they would recognize Leo. And this is at a level I never would have expected. So yeah, I never heard about a dog that would get recognized in the streets. But Leo does and he loves people in general, so yeah, he loves it.

TH: Charles Leclerc, thank you so much for taking your time to this. We appreciate it.

Martin Brundle interview with Scuderia Ferrari's Charles Leclerc via Sky Sports UK (2025 Saudi Arabia GP) + Full Transcript

Charles, how are you?

I'm good, I'm good. Feeling motivated for this weekend. We didn't have the start of the season that we dreamt of, but we are slowly getting back to it.

Behind the wheel, what do you want more from the car? What is it doing that you don't like?

So at the beginning of the year, I remember there was-- It was a very open balance. So very tricky in corner entry, quite a bit of mid-corner understeer. We are starting to find solutions to resolve the mid-corner understeer. It means that we've got to drive with a trickier car but this is something that I particularly like. I think in terms of balance, we are pretty much in the sweet spot of the car. What we are missing from now is just grip in low and medium speed. High speed, we are not too bad so I mean, we still need to confirm it here because people will run the car very differently compared to the previous races. But I will expect us to be a bit stronger here compared to the first part of the season. And that's also where it's interesting to have Lewis joining the team. By example, coming from Mercedes, it's a very different way of working compared to Ferrari and you also, doesn't mean that you'll necessarily take everything out of it but there are thing that open our mind in the way we work. Lewis arrived and obviously was giving his advices or his view on certain situations and in they way they were used to approach some problems. And we have different approaches, so that's the same for everyone in the paddock and that was very interesting.

Did it hurt a little bit when he won the sprint in China, mixed emotions?

Uhm, mixed emotions, yes, of course. I mean, you are happy. One side of you is happy because you see the potential of it, the other part of you is not happy because you wished you had done a better job in order to achieve the win. But it's part of racing, and yeah, that motivates me then to comeback that afternoon in qualifying and try to find something with the car to try and turn the situation around.

It's an extraordinary drive you've put in the Grand Prix in China with the front wing hanging off, just getting your head down. That was very Michael Schumacher-like, if I may say, of just driving around a problem and still having great pace.

Oh, thank you so much for that. It means a lot. But yeah, I mean, actually, I was also very surprised because we- I just wanted to do one or two laps to see if I could drive around that. Now we have a lot of buttons on the steering wheel, so I basically did everything I could to give rotation to the car because without the front wing it wasn't possible. But I kind of managed that and I was very surprised also that there was so much pace inside the car. So that was, that was a really good race. And I was proud that we managed to bring back-- Well actually, yeah. Then I forgot what happened next.

Yeah, then they took it away from you.

So we didn't bring back some points. But I was happy, uh, with the race itself.

[F1 Commentary: How is it Charles Leclerc has got that much more pace than his teammate, even though he's got a lot of his front wing missing?]

We've heard a lot of new floors and making the car better. Did it work in Bahrain?

It did. I don't think Bahrain was the best track to judge that because I think Jeddah is probably the track where we will see the full benefit of this upgrade. But we've seen all the numbers that we were expecting from this new floor were there, so that's a positive.

In Bahrain, if you'd have been a bit luckier with the safety car , you had a chance of P2 there, I think.

Yeah, P2, P3. I think the podium was definitely possible. Looking back at it, maybe starting on the soft was probably the right thing. But the way we had done the strategy, it was a good thing that we could extend the second stint in order to come back at the end. Because of the safety car, we couldn't do that so that hurt our performance for the last stint.

You've always been strong here. Two podiums of the four starts. Do you like this track?

I do, I really like street tracks in general. These are my favorite and it's a very challenging street track as well with all the high speed in the first sector. And I love high speed corners as well, so the combination of both made it one of my favorite tracks of the season.

We heard a funny radio call with your engineer in Melbourne. About water in your seat.

[F1 radio onboard from Charles Leclerc during 2025 Australian GP.

CL: I have the seat full of water. Like full of water.

Bryan Bozzi: Must be the water.

CL: Let's add that to the words of wisdom.]

And you said to quote you, "let's add that to the words of wisdom". I mean, is there a book? Is there some kind of notes of these words of wisdom?

Yes, there is. But it's an inside joke. We are keeping track with my engineers, some of the, like discussions that happened over the seven years that are funny in some way, in one way or the other and we call that the "Words of Wisdom".

Always a pleasure to talk to you.