Leclerc: Recovery F2 drives a better advert of my skills than wins
Ferrari Formula 1 junior driver Charles Leclerc believes his recent charges through the field in Formula 2 are a better advert of his skills than his dominant victories
The Prema Racing driver started at the back of the grid at the Hungaroring after he was stripped of pole position, but fought his way back to fourth place in the feature race.
In Belgium, Leclerc lost his race one win after his car was found to have an excessively worn plank but then stormed to fifth in the reverse-grid event, while in Monza he started the sprint race last after being knocked out of contention for the feature event win.
That run of results means Leclerc - who scored 188 points from the first sixth rounds of the F2 season - has scored just 30 points in the six races since he won the Silverstone feature race, when he claimed his last official podium finish.
The 19-year-old dismissed the notion that his lack of recent points was a cause for alarm, and reasoned that his recent difficulties had actually given him a chance to exhibit his racecraft to observers evaluating his potential for an F1 race seat in 2018.
"I'm not concerned about it at all," the Prema Racing driver told Autosport.
"I think, as we showed in Budapest, we got disqualified for an error on our side so fair play, we still did fourth in the race, which was amazing on the performance side.
"Then in Spa, we got disqualified and came back to fifth.
"The points at the end is the most important thing because it's what makes you win a championship or lose it, but I [also] think that for the people watching me, and trying to rate me for maybe a seat in F1 next year, I think these races have maybe even been helpful
"I think I showed something that I probably wouldn't have shown if we had raced starting from the front all the time.
"Luckily I am in a position where I still have a 59-point lead and so it has only been positive for the people that are trying to rate me to see me starting from the back and recovering these positions in the last races."
Spa DQ was "harder to take" than Budapest
Leclerc said he found his Spa disqualification from what would have been a fifth F2 feature race win "a bit harder to take" than losing out on pole at the Hungaroring.
He accepted the decision, but wished he had taken a different approach later in the race.
"We're not going to run the car 10mm higher just because we're scared to get disqualified," he said.
"[Spa] is just a track that's harder to predict this type of thing and we went a bit wrong.
"I probably should have taken the kerbs a bit less or maybe tried to push a bit less once I had a 10-second lead.
"It's like this, but it's OK."
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