The year Leclerc fully revealed his star status

It might seem odd, given his ultimately irresistible rise to the front of the Formula 1 grid on the back of a superb junior career, but until the 2017 Formula 2 season, Charles Leclerc had not fully confirmed his superstar potential.

After all, plenty of junior drivers with influential and experienced backers don't shine as brightly as their early promise suggests.

At the start of 2017, Leclerc was more than just a talented junior - he had just won the previous season's GP3 championship, taking a title Esteban Gutierrez, Valtteri Bottas, Daniil Kvyat and Esteban Ocon had used to springboard to F1. But the manner of his triumph in the third-tier series had left a little to be desired.

Following his second season racing cars - the 2015 European Formula 3 campaign in which he finished fourth with four wins, the best rookie driver - Autosport said of that year's F3 field: "You'd say he's the most likely of this year's crop to get to F1". Well, we all know how that turned out.

But at the same time, Leclerc had lost momentum following a massive crash at Zandvoort and also showed a reluctance to take risks in battle once he'd got into the title fight.

The same thing happened in that 2016 GP3 season, where Alex Albon pushed him hard from within the same ART Grand Prix line-up, which also included future F2 champion Nyck de Vries.

Leclerc won the championship, but on something of a downbeat note after retiring in a clash with Santino Ferrucci.

Leclerc had joined the Ferrari Driver Academy for 2016 and tested the Scuderia's contemporary F1 car, as well as making four F1 weekend practice outings for Haas. While this demonstrated Ferrari's faith in Leclerc, it also left him struggling to adapt back to his GP3 machinery on the three occasions he performed dual-weekend duties.

Nevertheless, with the GP3 crown in the bag, Leclerc stepped up to F2 in 2017 with Prema Racing, alongside fellow Ferrari junior Antonio Fuoco. It was obvious from the outset that his would be the standout story of the campaign - either by stamping his authority on a new category, or being overwhelmed by established stars Oliver Rowland and Artem Markelov.

It's worth remembering at this point that no rookie driver had won the GP2 (rebranded F2 for 2017) title since Nico Hulkenberg in '09.

Bouncing back from adversity with the right attitude and the right results was a theme of Leclerc's F2 season

It started very well indeed, but without firm conclusions from the first round in Bahrain. Leclerc claimed pole in a curtailed qualifying session, but faded to third in the feature race with major tyre-management issues. In the sprint race, however, he stunned the field, first by pitting in the non-mandatory-stop event, then by scything his way back up the order to take a first category win.

From then on, Leclerc was basically never out of contention. He went on a blistering run of pole positions and took feature race wins at Barcelona, in Baku and at the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone. Tyre management, always to the detriment of rookie racers in F2 for the sake, apparently, of entertainment, was no longer a problem.

The pole run is significant. It obviously showed Leclerc's speed, but it also revealed his fiercely competitive spirit.

Leclerc topped the first seven qualifying sessions of the season, but was stripped of pole in the last of those as a brass shim (different to the steel mandated in the F2 regulations) was discovered in his diffuser after qualifying at the Hungaroring.

The exclusion cost him a record of consecutive poles - it would have put him ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne's total achieved across the 2014-15 GP2 seasons - a target that Leclerc had set himself early on in the campaign. But his reaction spoke volumes. In a phone call across Budapest with Autosport, Leclerc was positively upbeat about the development.

"To be honest, I don't really mind, I'm actually quite happy to start last," he said. "[When I was] younger I always liked to catch up from the back and for tomorrow that's what I have to do."

And he did it in scintillating style, going from 19th to fourth at the Hungaroring of all places. Bouncing back from adversity with the right attitude and the right results was a theme of Leclerc's F2 season.

At Silverstone, a pre-race brake fire, a smoky mid-race oil leak and a wing mirror falling off his car had Prema massively concerned, but Leclerc serenely carried on to take the fifth of his seven wins. At Spa, after losing probably the most impressive of his feature race wins (a 26-second hammering) due to excessive plank wear, Leclerc again shot up from the back of the pack, rising from 19th to fifth in the sprint race. Getting stuck in with a title on the line was no longer a problem.

There were negative moments - his botched pass on Norman Nato in the Monaco sprint race capped a disastrous home weekend, and he was lucky to get away with a tap-pass on Albon in the second Abu Dhabi race, which led to a walk-off win. But on-track, Leclerc was generally sensational, and he was also pretty special without the action.

Having been lucky enough to witness Leclerc's 2017 success first-hand in my first correspondent role covering F2 and GP3 at Autosport, I got to see exactly what made him distinct off-track too.

After his first race disappointment in Monaco, I sent Leclerc a text asking if he wanted to chat and explain what had happened for our magazine report (I wasn't in Monaco after agreeing to run the clashing Edinburgh marathon, which did not go well, before joining the publication).

I didn't really expect much given we'd just met a few brief times at the previous round in Spain and he was bound to be busy at his home race. But suddenly my phone lit up and when had a long chat about what had gone wrong and how he might make up for things in the sprint race. "Not many drivers would go to that length," I can remember thinking as I stomped painfully and very slowly along the Firth of Forth's southern shore for more than five hours the next day - anything to take your mind off it, really.

Then there was his weekend in Baku, where, just three days after the death of his father he took pole, and went on to win the feature race. Only a yellow-flag infringement cost him victory in the sprint event, but he still finished second. This was a seriously impressive display on an emotional weekend for someone who was still only 19.

Leclerc's fierce will to win while learning from disappointments has been seen by millions in his subsequent F1 career

Those achievements just cannot be understated.

Throughout the year, Leclerc was courteous and generous with his time - no matter what result he had scored, or had taken away. Quietly, overwhelmingly, he was building his claim to the F2 crown and a place on the F1 grid. Not that he ever wanted to speak about the possibility of a 2018 F1 seat - and understandably so.

My last standout memory of Leclerc's 2017 domination came the day after he had sealed the title at a sweltering Jerez. He'd won the feature race to claim the crown, but had sacrificed the full life of his sprint race tyres to make certain of topping qualifying. This meant he tried another pitstop strategy in the second race, but couldn't pull off his Bahrain heroics again and had to settle for seventh.

While getting Leclerc's thoughts on that race afterwards, it was clear he was thoroughly pissed off, just a day after the biggest achievement of his career so far - and in doing so becoming the first driver of GP2/F2's high-degradation-tyre era to take the title as a rookie. "This guy just wants to win it all," I thought at the time.

And that fierce will to win while learning from disappointments has been seen by millions in his subsequent F1 career. It has taken him from Sauber, to Ferrari, to the top step of the Monza podium in scarlet overalls.

Now, with a new long-term Ferrari deal inked, he is likely to stay centre stage in the F1 spotlight, alongside Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton - still showing the talent and potential he always had, but which fully burst out during that standout season in 2017.