Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Yas Marina, 2022

Leclerc eager to support young karting talent in future

RaceFans Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc says he wants to help offer opportunities to young karters who lack the means to progress into higher level competition

In brief

Leclerc eager to support young karting talent in future

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc says he wants to help offer opportunities to young karters who lack the means to progress into higher level competition.

Leclerc, who will enter into his fifth season with Ferrari in 2023, won the FIA’s junior KF3 karting world cup back in 2011 and finished second in the world KZ championship in 2013, beaten by Max Verstappen. The Ferrari driver says he would like to be able to support emerging karting talent in the future.

“I would like to help talented young people, who don’t have the means, to emerge and make their dreams come true,” Leclerc told Gazzetta “But it is a project that takes time and which I therefore see as possible only in the future”.

Verstappen and Perez among the “very best” Red Bull pairing – Horner

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says that the combination of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez is among the best pairing the team has ever had.

Perez joined Verstappen at Red Bull in 2021. In two seasons together, Verstappen has won the world championship in both years and Red Bull were crowned constructors’ champions last season.

“We’ve been fortunate we’ve had some great drivers that we’ve worked with over the years and the current pairing of Max and Checo is right up there with the very best of them,” Horner said

“Occasionally it spills over, but not that often. We’ve been fortunate over the years that you could probably name on one hand the incidences that we’ve had between team mates. Generally they’ve worked they’ve worked extremely well together.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Comment of the day

As the debate over new teams joining Formula 1 continues to rage, reader grat believes that leaving the rulebook alone will help improve competition in the sport as much as the budget cap.

What we need is not further cost reduction, but stability of rules. Even in the new era, the 15mm floor height increase is actually a major change. From 2009 to 2020, I think there were only two seasons that didn’t require significant redesign due to chassis or aero rules changes. That’s murder to smaller teams– not only do they not have the finances to continuously reiterate their designs, they don’t have the depth of engineering that Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes have. Even with the cap, those teams have the best of the best of the engineering talent.

Finally, more teams will provide more opportunities for drivers and engineers in the new cost cap environment. With the cost cap, there are substantially fewer engineering jobs available, and of course, the driver market has been saturated with mature, experienced drivers at the cost of new drivers for some time.
grat

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Del Boy, Romulo Shortback and Leonardo Antunes!

On this day in motorsport

  • Born on this day in 1960: Pascal Fabre, who campaigned the hopeless AGS JH22 in 1987

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

5 comments on “Leclerc eager to support young karting talent in future”

  1. Eager to see how this combo performs.

  2. CotD highlights that the budget cap isn’t low enough to have the desired or intended effect.
    It shouldn’t (doesn’t) matter what the rules do from year to year if all teams have a fair crack at being able to make something that works well.
    Even if the exact same regs lasted for 20 years, the wealthier teams would still end up with a more developed product, better knowledge of it and likely more ability to exploit its strengths and minimise/avoid its weaknesses. Time is not a factor in that sense.
    For the most obvious example we need look no further than most spec series, where even with identical machinery and no technical development at all, certain teams are at the front year after year. Including with a rotating driver roster….

    Actually, I’d suggest the opposite to this post – where constant change is indeed the most helpful environment a smaller team can have. They can’t fall behind for multiple seasons if there’s a blank slate every year.

  3. Its kind of obvious that Horner would rate his current line up as potentially the best they’ve had.. but are they really Red Bull’s strongest pairing? I would think Vettel and Ricciardo were a really formidable line up in 2014.. and their strongest pairing was probably Max and Daniel together in 2017 and 2018.

    Since 2009, when red Bull started winning, I would say they’ve always had strong driver lineups. I would rate Gasly as the poorest performer in that Red Bull seat over the past decade, followed closely by Albon/Perez.

    So, their current lineup has the best driver that has ever driven for Red Bull – Max.. along with one of their least impressive drivers in Perez. I would probably rank their current line up as their 3rd best. #1 would be Max and Dan #2 Seb and Dan and #3 Max and Sergio

    1. He was probably asked otherwise I wouldnt know why to ever highlight Checo. He simply is the right man at this moment in time, but thats about it. But he is right that overall they seem to have had the least team mate trouble of the top teams. I think that also comes from having a more self confident lead driver than for instance Mercedes has. The more confidence, the less need for shady tactics and mind games towards team mates (or competitors for that matter).

  4. Did Leclerc steal Binotto’s glasses on his way out?

Comments are closed.