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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.

The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland trailer 🙂

Two days ago, Ellie Bate shared with us new photos of Rupert and also announced a new interview with him will be available for Buzzfeed UK. 

Today it’s Tony Clayton-Lea who tweeted about Rupert. He recently interviewed “one of the world’s most famous (erstwhile) teenage actors”, for the promotion of “Sick Note” (coming up November 2017). 

We don’t know when this interview will be published but we probably won’t have to wait too long to read it.