Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has said that his duel against Max Verstappen at the 2019 Austrian Grand Prix made him a more aggressive F1 racer.
Leclerc started on pole position and led most of the 71-lap race, but Verstappen managed to overtake him with just two laps of the grand prix to go.
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The Dutch ace made contact with Leclerc’s Ferrari as he made the overtake, but after reviewing the incident post race, the stewards decided that no action was necessary.
Speaking this week, Leclerc, who is now in his third season with Ferrari in Formula One, said the incident made him a more aggressive racer.
“Yes. Partly because since that weekend the approach of the stewards has changed, and we have been allowed to go a little bit beyond what had been the limits until that moment,” Leclerc said in an interview with the Italian edition of Motorsport.com when asked if the stewards’ verdict has made him race his opponents more aggressively.
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“I think that was good for our sport and I said that right away at the end of that race even though I was upset with the result.
“I always thought that if they had allowed us to race with fewer constraints we would have been able to offer more spectacular races, but we needed continuity in the method of judging, as then happened.
“From that moment on, we were confident that we could push harder in the melee without the fear of running into penalties, and I adapted well to this new situation,” he added.
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