F1 News
Leclerc was very worried: 'I didn't have much hope for him'.
- GPblog.com
Charles Leclerc was very worried about the radio earlier when he saw in his mirrors that Romain Grosjean crashed hard. In conversation with the BBC, the Monegask looks back at this moment, thinking of the worst. What followed were minutes that seemed to take hours for the driver, until the redemptive word came.
Extremely serious
"I saw the crash in my mirrors, was aware straight away that it was extremely serious and I thought the worst straight away", he says to BBC Sport. "I have to be honest, I didn’t have much hope only watching it in the mirrors, and I was extremely worried on the radio."
"Unfortunately, there was no news until I got back into the pits and got out of the car to finally know he was out, which I couldn’t really believe, especially because coming into Turn Nine, I saw the flames and the fire."
That Leclerc was so worried is not surprising. He has seen several people disappear in his still young career. For example, Jules Bianchi was killed in a crash in the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix. And last year Anthoine Hubert was killed in a major crash at Spa in Formula 2, which was a good childhood friend of the Monegask.
Rediscovered focus
After the repair work on the guardrail, which was replaced by concrete blocks, Leclerc got back in the car. This with regained focus. "I just put myself in my bubble as I always do and tried to focus on my own thing. There are a lot of things you need to have in mind before an F1 race, which is the strategy, how you want to attack in the first laps and all these things."
"I was just focusing on those things to achieve the best result, trying to not think about the crash any more, mostly because I knew Romain was out of the car and fine to the extent he could walk by himself to the ambulance. So I was just focusing on my own race after that and trying not to think about the crash any more", Leclerc said.