Charles Leclerc will be saying goodbye to a former team-mate at the season finale in Abu Dhabi this weekend, as Sebastian Vettel prepares for his final race in Formula 1.
The 35-year-old made his debut all the way back in 2007 at the United States Grand Prix, where he replaced Robert Kubica at BMW-Sauber due to the Pole being declared unfit.
Fast forward to 2022 and the much-loved German has claimed four World Championships and 53 Grand Prix victories, whilst having also taught so much to so many drivers.
One of those being Leclerc, who’s first team-mate at Ferrari was Vettel, with the two having been partners at the Maranello-based team in 2019 and 2020.
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Leclerc was very much the bright youngster when he joined Ferrari, alongside the veteran that is Vettel.
The 24-year-old revealed that despite no longer being team-mates, they still “text each other”, with the German being a “genuinely nice person”.
“Of course we still text each other. It’s not like we send each other messages every week, but whenever there is obviously a big thing coming up we always text,” he told RacingNews365.
“I think everybody’s going to miss him because Seb is a very, very nice person to be a Formula 1 driver. He’s really a genuinely nice person.”
Leclerc went on to explain a bit about the Aston Martin driver’s work rate, which is seemingly beyond anyone else’s.
The Ferrari driver revealed that Vettel is the “hardest worker” in F1 and was often the first person in the garage in the morning and the last to leave in the evening, a trait Leclerc has carried on with him.
“He’s the hardest worker in the Formula 1 paddock for sure,” said Leclerc.
“When I came from Formula 2 to Alfa Romeo and then to Ferrari, I would arrive at the team in the morning and he would already have been up for an hour and a half!
“I took that quite a bit from him, because now I’m actually in pretty early and out pretty late.
“It was good to see him arrive so early and leaving so late, but in the first times I was like ‘What is he looking at? What does he need so much time for?'”
There is no doubt that Leclerc would’ve gained valuable knowledge in regard to set-up and tyre degradation whilst alongside Vettel, especially given the German has driven so many different specs of F1 machinery.
Leclerc admitted he “learned” a lot from Vettel, something which has “helped” his development over the past few years.
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“With experience and speaking with him, there was always very little details that I was not really taking care of at the beginning which he was looking at and made the difference,” the Monegasque added.
“So there are a lot of things that I learned from him, especially at that stage of my career, when I was very young.
“To have such an experienced driver, such a successful driver as Seb next to me as a teammate, it was a great achievement and helped me a lot.”