Leclerc believes online racing will help when his world returns to normality and he is back behind the wheel of a 200mph Ferrari race car. But on this social platform, I feel I am more myself and I am definitely enjoying it without thinking too much about saying something wrong."
"It helped me quite a lot to play and stream at the same time to be my real self and show more of my real self, which I sometimes struggled to do at races due to the pressure when things are different. You need to be careful because it's still social and a lot of people can see it. "We also need to be careful because we know a lot of people are watching us, but on the other hand I try to be myself as much as possible. But while he still keeps some filter on his thoughts, watching him on Twitch is as close as you can get (certainly in the current environment) to meeting Leclerc in a bar or chatting with him over a coffee. When he is racing online, he is often wearing his Ferrari team clothing and, in doing so, representing a number of million-dollar sponsors on a worldwide platform. Of course, Leclerc still has an image to uphold. But playing with all the other drivers, and friends, we've been friends for a long time, with Lando, George, Alex, so we can be ourselves and I enjoy it a lot more than I thought." "At a track, it's different, there's pressure, things like this, so to be yourself is a bit different. For the people that follow me, I think it's the closest you can get to the real me. "Twitch is something I never thought I'd enjoy and I never saw myself doing," Leclerc says.
And whether it's an official race on the F1 game or trying to roll an articulated lorry on Euro Truck Simulator 2, Leclerc interacts with his rivals in a way we never see at a real racetrack - and for fans of the Ferrari driver, it's all free to watch on Twitch. Leclerc is the shining light in a new generation of F1 talent that emerged in the past two years, including Albon, George Russell and Lando Norris. There's nothing else to do."Īlthough Leclerc takes online racing seriously, for his viewers on Twitch half the fun is seeing him go up against and communicate with other F1 drivers. Probably five hours a day, something like this. "Since I had the game, I've played quite a lot. "It's a lot of practice," he admits during a Ferrari news conference held over Webex. Two weeks later, he followed it up with a second victory, at the Virtual Chinese Grand Prix, after a tight battle with real-world rival Red Bull's Alex Albon. Remarkably, just eight days after downloading the official F1 game, Leclerc won on his online debut at Formula One's Virtual Vietnam Grand Prix - a race held in lieu of the real Vietnam Grand Prix on April 5.
Stuck in the confines of his Monaco flat, he is gaming for roughly five hours a day to ensure he is as competitive as he can be for F1's official esports events every other weekend. Once it became clear that turning up to real racetracks was no longer an option, Leclerc started devoting more and more time to esports. It might sound like a sales pitch for his latest social media account, but anyone who has watched him gaming (a number already in the millions) will have seen a very different side to Ferrari's racing prodigy. If you want to know the real Charles Leclerc, he recommends watching his Twitch feed while he is racing online with his friends. Getting to know the real Charles Leclerc.
You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser