Charles Leclerc has spoken out about his first season racing alongside Carlos Sainz and says the Spaniard helped spur him on to race harder throughout the season.
The Monegasque driver admitted that he felt “pushed” by his new teammate at Ferrari and says he has learned a lot as they head into their second season together.
Sainz finished the season five points ahead of Leclerc, despite popular opinion suggesting that Leclerc would be the dominant driver in 2021.
“We learned a lot,” Leclerc told reporters.
“As always when you have a new team-mate you always learn, [such as] the new ways Carlos is approaching race weekends, the way he works, his talent, his raw speed also, the way he takes the corners.
“He had an amazing year, so he obviously pushed me very, very much to try and perform better at every race and it’s just been extremely interesting.”
“I think maybe one of the strong points of Carlos is the race management and tyre management, and that was probably my weakness in 2019.
“I progressed a lot as a driver in 2020 and again last year, and part of last year was thanks to Carlos.”
