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Giovinazzi thinking about self rather than trying to replace Leclerc

Giovinazzi "thinking about self" rather than trying to replace Leclerc

22-12-2018 10:11
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Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Sort-of-Sauber rookie Antonio Giovinazzi has insisted he won't be trying to emulate Charles Leclerc at the Swiss-Italian team, even though the 25-year-old will replace the Ferrari-bound Leclerc at Sauber in 2019.

Leclerc finished with a quite incredible 39 points in 2018 for Sauber in his rookie season, with the Monegasque establishing himself already as one of the better drivers on the grid so early on in his career.

The 21-year-old has been snapped up by Ferrari for 2019, becoming the second youngest driver in the team's history. Giovinazzi will have to follow him up at Sauber, which will be a hard thing to do, but the Italian insists that he'll be focussing on himself rather then comparing himself to the mercurial Leclerc in 2018.

“To be honest I didn’t speak much with him about this jump,” Giovinazzi was quoted by Motorsport Week talking about Leclerc.

“I want to think about myself and don’t repeat maybe the result of what Charles did this year or [to try and] improve his result. So my target is just to do the best from my side and see.

“I will also have a different teammate from Charles [Kimi Raikkonen], so everything will look different.

“I hope the car will be faster from Race 1 [compared to 2018] and we can start to push already from Melbourne. It will be quite tough for the first races because beside me is a World Champion with a lot of years in F1.

“From my side I need to do just my job and improve myself race by race and then we’ll see at the end of the year if we did a good job or not.”

Giovinazzi already had a very brief stint with Sauber in 2017, replacing Pascal Wehrlein for the Australian and Chinese Grand Prix. In the latter of the two, Giovinazzi crashed in both qualifying and in the race itself, taking several cars with him in the process. He hasn't exactly left the best taste in the mouths of F1 fans, so he'll need to prove his doubters wrong in 2019.