Leclerc determined to storm off the grid the bit between his teeth!

Charles Leclerc will be pulling out the stops from the outset this afternoon in the Austrian Grand Prix in a bid to negate his five-place grid penalty.

The Sauber driver has been demoted from 13th - where he qualified - to 18th as the result of a gearbox replacement conducted by the Swiss outfit between FP3 and qualifying.

While the set-back will complicate the Monegasque's task, it won't deter Leclerc from targeting his fifth points-scoring finish in six races.

"I will have to take some risks at the start because of that suspension failure that finished in a gearbox failure but it’s life sometimes, it happens in motorsport," he said.

"Hopefully we will have a good start, a good first lap. It’s quite optimistic to target points, it’s still the target but it’s going to be very difficult to get them."

• Leclerc gets big bucks for 2-year Ferrari deal!

On Saturday, Leclerc made the Q2 cut for the sixth consecutive time, a remarkable feat for Sauber but one the Ferrari junior still does not view as the new norm for the Swiss outfit.

"I think this is the difficult part – to still enjoy the Q2," said the 20-year-old.

"It can look like it’s normal now from the outside but I think we are doing quite a crazy job every qualifying since a bit.

"In the last run of Q2 we had some balance issue but overall 13th is very positive.

"The balance was not how I wanted in the last run of Q2, I did some mistake, but the car was not helping me also to make the lap I wanted but before that we did everything pretty well," he added.

"It happens sometimes but I really insist we should be very satisfied with P13."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter