Leclerc tipped as future champion - by Verstappen's manager!

©Ferrari

Max Verstappen's manager Raymond Vermeulen has said that he believes Charles Leclerc could become a future Formula 1 world champion, despite his having missing out on the title this year.

Leclerc got off to a cracking start to his campaign and won two of the first three races to give himself a 46 point advantage over Verstappen.

Bu then it all unravelled for the Ferrari driver, who since then has only won once more in Austria, while Verstappen has racked up 12 victories to wrap up the title with four races remaining.

Read also: Leclerc accepts penalty and congratulates Verstappen

But having been an interested party watching from the sidelines, Vermeulen says he rated Leclerc and fully expects the Monegasque to realise his title hopes in time.

"I think if he has the right package, Charles is definitely also a future Formula 1 World Champion if he has the car that he requires," Vermeulen told the latest F1 Nation podcast.

Ferrari were beset by problems and miscues during the season, and Vermeulen added that Leclerc had suffered from issues with the F1-75's handling that led to tyre degradation and Leclerc crashing out of the lead of the French GP.

Driver manager Raymond Vermeulen with Max Verstappen

"A lot of the mistakes that happened to both Ferrari drivers was because they seem to have quite a loose rear that's a little bit unpredictable," he proposed.

"If you're already a little bit on the backfoot you push that just extra couple of percent more, and you're driving closer at the limit. Then it's obviously easy to make a mistake.

Vermeulen said that Leclerc and Verstappen were equally matched and it was only the performance of the Red Bull and Ferrari cars that had separate them this year.

"I think Charles is equally talented," he said. "Some of his pole position laps that he put together this year were just unbelievable.

"I also think he has the race craft. But if you have bigger tyre degradation during the race, there's not much that you can do as a driver.

"You can be like Sergio Perez who is one of the best in saving rear tyres, but I think they are all pretty good in that sense.

"Ultimately, you need a car that performs over one and a half hours - and Charles didn't have this for most of the races."

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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.