In an improved Ferrari car, Leclerc has taken a victory and a P2 in the first two races of the season, and is now leading the drivers' standings.
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Charles Leclerc’s “mindset and mentality” have evolved, according to Ferrari ambassador and long-time test driver Marc Gene, as the Monegasque driver aspires to win his first Formula One World Championship title in 2022. In a much-improved Ferrari package, Leclerc has taken a victory and a P2 in the first two races of the season, and is now leading the drivers’ standings, while the Scuderia is comfortably leading the teams’ table. Gene discussed how Leclerc has changed for this season in our F1 Nation podcast, which was recorded after Leclerc won the Bahrain Grand Prix from pole.
“Charles, he used to be very emotional and this year he has changed a lot. Charles is like a 2.0 version of himself. When I went to Barcelona for the private testing, we spent a lot of time together and he was completely changed in his mindset and his mentality, and you can see it,” he said.
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“[In Bahrain] I was expecting Charles to be more over the moon after qualifying, after the pole, and the race, but he seemed so much more mature and aware that this is a very long championship.”
Gene credited the calmness within Ferrari to Team Principal Mattia Binotto and driver Carlos Sainz, who made his F1 debut with Italian outfit Minardi, then tested for Williams and – alongside Luca Badoer – became Ferrari’s test driver in 2004.
“I think Mattia, Charles and Carlos are going to be very important in keeping these emotions that we Italians, we tend to have,” he said.
“So, I leave that to the tifosi. But the three main characters of this team, which are the two drivers and the team principal, they are not emotional; Mattia is half Swiss [and the calmness] you can see with Carlos, it comes from his father.”
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With Ferrari now in pole position to wrest the constructors’ title from Mercedes, Gene added that the Scuderia is eager to usher in a new dynasty, even if their reign will be shorter than Mercedes’. “I think cycles cannot be beyond the one that Mercedes has had any longer; that is the longest probably that we will see in F1 history. But definitely [Ferrari’s] group of people are ready to open a new era,” Gene said.
“I always say you learn more from the bad years than from the good years and now that we have a good car, we are ready for a new era I think, because it is the same people that suffered so much.”
