Leclerc hails 'amazing' run of races in rookie season

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Charles Leclerc has certainly been gaining a lot of attention in his first season in the Formula 1 world championship.

Since joining Sauber at the start of the year, the Monegasque driver has scored points in three out of his first seven Grand Prix starts, including sixth place in Baku.

In Canada, Leclerc held on to tenth despite heavy pressure from Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly. He's failed to finish only once, in Monaco, when he suffered a brake failure.

It's meant he's been praised by no lesser figures than Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, and tipped for possible promotion to Ferrari as early as 2019.

“I can’t believe that we are having such positive races," the 20-year-old told the official Formula 1 website this week.

"Actually that’s now four or five races that we are just having amazing results race after race.

"It’s great but we need to keep working and keep improving like we are doing and hopefully it will continue like that."

The reigning Formula 2 champion said that Canada had been a particular achievement as it showed that the team could bounce back quickly.

Leclerc will take the praise, but won't keep it

“I am extremely happy about it,” Leclerc said. “We were coming back from a brake issue in Monaco on probably the most difficult track for the brakes in Montreal.

"We knew how to fix the issues we had in Monaco and that’s what we did here.

"It was a very big challenge for us but we reacted very well. I am really proud of the work we have done."

“We need to be careful a little bit," he said, cautioning against raised expectations. "I believe that the four or five next races will be a lot more difficult for us, but we’ll have to see.

“You just need more downforce on tracks like Le Castellet or the four or five races that are after," he explained. "That’s where we are lacking at the moment.

"We will work and hopefully we will improve but at the moment that is our downside.”

"[But] I’m extremely happy with the races we’ve done until now. We’ve taken every opportunity we had to score points and about this we should be very proud.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.