“Kindness and Determination”: Leclerc Remembers His Friend Jules Bianchi

Ten years after the Frenchman’s passing following his accident

On this tenth anniversary of Jules Bianchi’s passing, Charles Leclerc spoke about the man who was his mentor — but more importantly, one of his best friends. In a column published on Formula 1’s official website, the Ferrari driver reflected on his emotional memories with Bianchi, both in childhood and later in life.

“My first memories of Jules aren’t of Jules the driver, but rather of Jules the person, because I knew him much more as a human being than as a racing driver. We spent a lot of time together during our childhood, and our two families were — and still are — extremely close.

My older brother and Jules were the best of friends, so he was always around. Jules was eight years older than me, closer in age to my brother. I was six or seven at the time, and at that age, you really feel the age gap.

As we grew up, the age difference seemed to shrink in a way, and we became close friends. I have some stories from that time, like the first horror movie I ever watched — with Jules.

He didn’t know I was pretending to sleep. He was trying to make sure I was asleep because he wanted to watch the film with my older brother! Jules was a truly kind person. He was very funny and had his moments of craziness when you got to know him well. He was always happy to help and to have fun.

The clearest memories I have are probably from when I was six or seven, when I was first allowed to drive a rental kart with him and my brother. Normally, rental karts are for adults only, but his father ran the track and would obviously let us do things we maybe weren’t supposed to.

I looked up to him, so racing with him, with my older brother, with his younger brother, and with many other professional karting drivers at the time, was amazing. We had so much fun. We’d hang around and wait for the karting track to close to the public so we could go on. Then we’d tear it up for hours and hours.

Those are probably the most vivid memories I have. Jules was the most competitive person I’ve ever met, and I feel like I got that competitive spirit from him.

When we raced karts, there was that competitiveness, but even in the silliest things we did at home, it was the same. He would get so frustrated when he lost at something!

He was also very obsessive: when he wasn’t good enough at something, you’d see him a month, two months, or three months later, and he’d have been training whenever he had the chance.

I remember playing squash against him, for example. At first, he was already much better than me, but I recall that five or six months later, he had organized a match with one of the world’s top 20 players.

He did really well, and it was incredibly impressive because he had trained every single day to get better at squash. That’s a trait I’ve always admired in Jules. He never, ever gave up, and he worked so hard to improve at anything. Whatever he did, he gave it everything he had.

I hope people remember Jules as an extremely talented driver who, unfortunately, never had the chance to be in a top team with a car that allowed him to show the full extent of his talent.

There are people where you can just see it in their eyes, in their smile, how good they are — and I think Jules was one of them. That’s probably the most important thing I’ll always remember about Jules — the kindness of the person he was, and the determination with which he pursued his goals.”

Source Article : https://motorsport.nextgen-auto.com/fr/formule-1/la-gentillesse-et-la-determination-leclerc-raconte-son-ami-jules-bianchi,201071.html