Formula 1: Charles Leclerc pulls off feat not achieved since 2011
By Asher Fair
By taking the pole position for the Russian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc pulled off a feat that had not previously been achieved since the 2011 Formula 1 season.
Back in the 2011 Formula 1 season, Charles Leclerc was 13, soon to be 14, years old. The 2011 season turned out to be the second of four consecutive championship seasons for Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing.
Skip ahead eight years to the 2019 season, and Leclerc and Vettel are teammates at the most historic team on the Formula 1 grid: Scuderia Ferrari.
As of late, the 21-year-old Monegasque has outperformed his four-time world champion teammate at the Prancing Horse, and without a favorable strategy call that went the way of the 32-year-old German in the Singapore Grand Prix, Leclerc would have earned three consecutive victories.
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Nevertheless, Leclerc bounced back from his disappointing second place finish at the Marina Bay Street Circuit by taking the pole position for the 16th race on the 21-race 2019 schedule, the Russian Grand Prix, at Sochi Autodrom. Vettel qualified in third place with Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton splitting the two red cars.
Mercedes have been the dominant team of the V6 turbo hybrid era, winning all five championships, both driver and constructor championships, since it began in the 2014 season. They have won 84 of the 115 races that have been contested since then, and they have taken the 92 of the 116 available pole positions.
Because of this dominance, what Leclerc did in Russia hadn’t been done since the 2011 season when Vettel was still a one-time champion en route to winning his second title.
Leclerc’s pole position for this race was his fourth consecutive pole position. Prior to the Singapore Grand Prix, he also took the pole positions for the Belgian Grand Prix and the Italian Grand Prix.
Not since Vettel took the pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix, the Belgian Grand Prix, the Italian Grand Prix, the Singapore Grand Prix and the Japanese Grand Prix in the second half of the 2011 season had a non-Mercedes driver taken four consecutive pole positions. Vettel, if you were counting, took five pole positions during this streak.
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Will Charles Leclerc be able to turn his historic fourth consecutive Formula 1 pole position into a victory? The Russian Grand Prix is set to be broadcast live from Sochi Autodrom on ESPN2 beginning at 7:05 a.m. ET tomorrow morning.