Leclerc's debut victory fuels changing of the guard at Ferrari

Leclerc, who grew up in karting, has such enormous basic speed that he won the GP2016 championship in 3 and the Formula 2017 championship in 2 and, after joining Sauber, became the first Formula 1 winner from Monaco in his first year at Ferrari has advanced. The fact that it only happened in the 13th race of the season was actually astonishing. Because Leclerc, who was in the second Ferrari instead of Kimi Räikkönen in 2019, would have won in his second appearance of the season in Bahrain without technical problems. Most recently in Austria, he was only overtaken by Max Verstappen as the leader on the last lap.

Like Verstappen, who is the same age, Leclerc is not just a very young winner. The young man from the Formula 1 capital Monaco has already been through a lot. In Spa on Sunday he drove 44 times past the spot where his friend and fellow racing driver Anthoine Hubert had a fatal accident in a Formula 2 race the day before. Leclerc perfected his driving skills on the kart track run by his friend and mentor Jules Bianchi's father. The Frenchman had such a serious accident in Japan in October 2014 that he died after nine months in a coma. In 2017, Leclerc took pole and victory in Formula 2 in Baku a few days after the death of his father Herve due to illness.

Leclerc: “I like danger” You have to put that aside first. Leclerc had already been of the opinion before Belgium that all these blows of fate had only made him grow faster. Fear is apparently not an issue for the thoroughbred racing driver, who lived at the start/finish of the Monaco race track for a while. “I am aware that danger is part of racing. I like the danger, I like the adrenaline and I have to race,” he once said.

This is also why Leclerc has long been considered the future world champion. Spa was a Ferrari revelation. While Leclerc raced to victory from pole, four-time world champion and last year's winner Vettel, who started next to him from row one, became the water carrier. The German had to be the first to pit. He was later instructed by radio to let Leclerc pass.

Leclerc celebrated a lights-to-flag victory in Spa. © APA/afp / JOHN THYS

Vettel in Spa just an assistant Vettel started the season as the clear number one. In Spa he was at least able to point out tire problems that made it impossible for him to keep up with his younger teammate. “I slipped a lot more than him and just couldn’t find the grip,” complained the German. “It quickly became clear that I couldn’t keep up with Charles. So I tried to hinder the Mercedes and serve the team. "I was more or less a roadblock," he said, explaining his contribution to Ferrari's first victory of the season and the first since Räikkönen in the USA last October.

In the end, Vettel still had to let both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas go and settle for fourth place. A week before the big home appearance in Italy, it is now finally clear that Vettel, who is already 13 points behind World Cup leader Hamilton after 21 of 99 races, will not drive Ferrari to the title in 2019 either.

At least Ferrari in Monza has a similarly promising race on the next high-speed track as in Spa thanks to enough horsepower. Ferrari is going for its first home win there since 2010. But if Vettel loses to Leclerc there too, the course is set.

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Leclerc's debut victory fuels changing of the guard at Ferrari

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