Piero Ferrari believes his father, Enzo Ferrari, would have approved of Charles Leclerc as a Scuderia Ferrari driver, believing the Monegasque driver has everything needed to be a success with the Maranello-based squad.
Leclerc joined Ferrari at the start of the 2019 season in place of Kimi Räikkönen and immediately showed why they decided to promote him to the team despite having only one full season in Formula 1, where he raced for the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team in 2018.
He won two races in his first year with the team in Belgium and Italy, and although he has not won again since – mainly due to the performance deficits of the machinery he is driving – he has still managed to achieve thirteen podiums and nine pole positions, including two this year in Monaco and Azerbaijan.
And the Vice President of Ferrari says Leclerc is a driver with ‘incredible talent’ and will bring the team a lot of big results if they give him the car to do it in.
“Charles is a driver who would have been very much to my father’s taste,” Ferrari is quoted as saying on German publication Speedweek by PlanetF1.com. “Comparisons with previous drivers are always difficult.
“But it can certainly be said that Gilles Villeneuve, for example, was a pure instinct driver. Charles is completely different – an intelligent guy blessed with incredible talent in every respect, highly focused. If we give him the right car, he will give us a lot of pleasure.”
Ferrari also commented about Carlos Sainz Jr., Leclerc’s current team-mate at Ferrari, and he believes there is a good line-up at the team in 2021.
The Spaniard currently has scored eight and a half more points than Leclerc and has scored three podiums to the Monegasque racer’s one this year, the most recent in the Russian Grand Prix last weekend.
He said that Sainz is “a reliable, fast driver as we have just seen in Russia – with he and Charles, we have a great team.”
