Charles Leclerc: 6 Ways to Mentally Reset After Challenges in Life & How to Change Your Mindset on Learning From Mistakes

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2:23I love what I do, but I want to be the best. There's one man in the Formula One that has gotten a lot of attention, the championship contender, Charles Leclerc. If your father was here now, what do you think he'd say to you? As soon as he passed away, I asked myself, what would he want me to do? Hey everyone, I've got some huge news to share with you. In the last 90 days, 79.4 % of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are not subscribed to this channel. There's research that shows that if you want to create a habit, make it easy to access. By hitting the subscribe button, you're creating a habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed.

3:07This would also mean the absolute world to me and help us make better, bigger, brighter content for you and the world. Subscribe right now. Number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier and more healed. I don't think there's anything more interesting in the world than human story. And what I love about this podcast is I get to dive into the minds of people that are often mysterious.

3:45We don't know so much about them. We may see them on the big screen, but here we're getting to learn about them behind the scenes. And today's guest is someone who I met just a few moments ago. I've been looking forward to this interview for a long, long time. I'm so glad to finally have him in the studio. And in the few moments I've spent with him, I can already tell that we're going to have a great conversation. Please welcome to On Purpose, Charles Leclerc. Charles Leclerc is one of the biggest names in global sport. Charles currently races in Formula One driving for the legendary Ferrari since 2019.

4:16the youngest driver in history to be signed up by the team. Charles features in the hit Netflix series Drive to Survive and is loved by fans and sports community alike for his positive mindset and determined, straightforward approach. Charles, thank you for being here. Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person and to be here. When I was researching, as I do for all my guests, I can listen to interviews, I'll read articles. you haven't done a lot of interviews. You don't talk so much about things publicly. I was wondering why did you feel now was the right time and this was the right platform?

4:54You've got something special in all the different interviews you do. I think you get out the best out of the people and it's something very special. Of course, we do lots of interviews, but they are mostly based on our racing career, of course, which I'm very happy to speak of and about all the time. But it's good also to get to know the person behind the steering wheel. In our case, we always have a helmet as well. So it's difficult to put a face on the name sometimes. And I think it's a great way to maybe show a bit of myself. Yeah, definitely. And I want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for trusting me.

5:25And I want to say how grateful I am that you allowed us to have this conversation because it's not always comfortable to take the helmet off and do this. And so I appreciate it. But let's dive straight in. I want to ask you, what would you have been if you weren't a race car driver? Oh, good question to start with. Probably an architect. I love design in general. I wouldn't have been good enough to be an artist, but definitely an architect. I love architecture in general. It's another passion of mine. So yeah, probably an architect. Nice. And do you think that some of that passion has helped with being a Formula One racer, with the engineering, the understanding of the car, the design?

6:07Do you think that's transferred or not really? Not really, because obviously with my career, I had to stop quite early school to put myself into and having the best chances in order to succeed in that sport. You need to very early on taking crucial decisions. And my parents were always very supportive of that, which obviously helped me as well. But so I didn't do the study to get to being an architect or close of being an architect. But it's always something that interested me. so no it did not help my racing career but it's definitely something that i would like to look at once my career is done uh to maybe uh yeah be able to do something there don't speak too soon we don't need you we've got you've got many many years ahead of you so we'll put that out into the far far future when you first had the experience of driving your first ever race guys a young boy i believe you're like four years old yes three and a half three and a half walk us through what you remember what was the first time you remember driving a car and you remember how you felt and what was that feeling like well first of all I started by total coincidence I was a kid three and a half years old I didn't want to go to school that day and I said my father I was ill and he believed me by coincidence he had to go and see his best friend which owned a karting track so I got in the car with him went there and then I was seeing the karting going around the track and I was asking can I try but obviously at three and a half years old there are not really any karts made for a three and a half years old kid but luckily for me the owner which was Jules Bianchi's father Philippe Bianchi had a karting made for his son when he was three and a half so there was everything ready and I tried for the first time there and I remember the first lap they attached a rope to my karting and there was an adult driving in front of me just to make sure that I will be able to turn etc and after the first lap we took off the rope and I went on until there was no fuel left so it was an amazing feeling straight away I enjoyed the feeling of being in control of a karting at such a young age was something very very amazing to experience and I like I love the adrenaline that it gave me so it was a definitely a very special moment I cannot remember it because I was too young but at the same time I've got images that my father had done of this day, which gives you back a bit the feeling of the day.

8:36Yeah, that's beautiful to be able to look back. Yeah, I was thinking if you remember that from three and a half, that's impressive. I can't remember anything from when I was three and a half years old. But pictures do such a wonderful job of doing that. Walk us through the level of discipline and rigor and training that you've had to adopt. I feel like the Formula One season is like relentless it's long it's tiring it's exhausting when i look at the amount of races there are when i've spoken to other drivers it's just it's all encompassing like your whole life is absorbed into this of course how have you allowed yourself and we're getting to the end of the season right now as we're taping how have you developed the stamina like what does it take to see yourself through to the end when it's so grueling and so demanding it changes a lot in in your career because you start in karting where there you are spending a lot of days on track but it's always a track that is very close to your house so even though you travel or you spend a lot of time in the car to get to the track you are racing all day you come back at home the evening it's still quite easy in a way because it's all very very close then you get to single seaters formula 4 formula 3 formula 2 where you've got to travel a bit more all around europe i'll say but you've only got like 12 13 races to do in a year so it's still not too much it takes a lot of time of course but it's still not too much and then you get to Formula One and it's 24 races now all over the world and in between the races you also got to do a lot of events sponsorship events for the preparation of the races I'm going in the simulator in Maranello so lots of things are adding up which makes it a season that is extremely tiring and especially when we get to the end of the season like it is now it is more and more difficult but then it's all about trying to plan the things better I arrived the first year in Formula One and to be honest I was a mess I arrived and I was doing the flight myself I'll get to the track the day just before the practice will start and I will be super tired and especially the end of the season then you don't manage to stay at your 100 % all the time and then of course with experience you learn now there are a whole team of people helping me in all of this because it's super important to be 100 % at the end of the season and now yeah you you plan the things better in order to uh to keep a good quality of life training diet sleeping is super important the different time zones uh all over the world is very difficult to manage as well.

11:18But now I am up to speed with that. Yeah, I love hearing that. I remember I've interviewed different athletes in different sports. And I remember speaking to one athlete who at the time was at the cusp of, I think, potentially going to one day become one of the best. And I remember asking him like what his routine was and how he prepared and he didn't have one. And it didn't get better. Like it didn't improve from there. and then you see that it's hard to sustain a career like that. Walk us through because I think people are fascinated because I think anyone who's not a fan of F1 or hasn't watched Drive to Survive as we were talking about earlier or doesn't understand it, they don't recognize how physically demanding it is to sit in a car.

12:00I'll just give an example to everyone. I went go-karting like two weeks ago and I was nowhere near going as fast as you go, obviously in an electric go-kart. And I came back with like - The ribs. Yeah, completely bruised. and like and that's just from like a little kids go-karting thing it's so demanding in so many ways walk us through first of all walk us through your like your diet your sleep what is that routine like for you personally what do you eat what what do you need to build in terms of working out etc and then talk to me about what actually happens during a race to you like what's going through your body and mind the sleep for me is the number one priority it is so incredibly important is where obviously you rest and recover all the energy in the body that you need.

12:46And it's something super important. So on that, I'm super strict. I'm a good sleeper. I probably sleep around 10, 11 hours a night. So really, really a long, long, long time. Do you have any tricks for that or are you just a good sleeper? No, I'm a good sleeper. The only big problem I have is that I don't sleep in planes for some reason. I struggle to sleep in planes, which I spend a lot of time. So I need to take the planes by day so I can stay awake and all of these kind of things. But again, that is part of planning. Diet, I've got a dietician in Milan that is following me and sending me all the diet requirements.

13:22I used to have something very repetitive, which then you get bored of. Now it's a lot more diverse, so it's very difficult to get into the details of what I say. but it's more carbohydrates, especially once race day are coming. Our weight fluctuates a lot throughout a week of racing because you get the Friday before train, before the practice, driving practice. And you're quite heavy because there you ate a lot of carbohydrates. That takes the water. You drink a lot of water. You need to be well hydrated. But then we go through extreme heat inside the cockpit. So you lose so much water. And in some races, you can lose up to three and a half, four kilos of water, which is very difficult then in the one or two days after to recover from that.

14:13Yeah, this is super important, the hydration plan and the dietitian plan in order to be fully on it throughout the weekend. and then physically it is a very strange sport in a way because there are muscles that no other sports you really use which especially the neck by example the neck is probably the the hardest part to train properly because it's full of little muscles that you don't use and that is very difficult to reproduce in a gym so driving is basically the only training you can get for that as much as you are trying with elastics to try and reproduce that but it's very difficult whenever we get to the first day of practice in february after the winter break you speak to all drivers and at the end of the first day they are all so tired so tired just because the neck is a very difficult one to uh to use but to train but then lots of cardio training uh it's super important and another thing that is also difficult to to train is the breathing techniques because with the g-forces sometimes it's very difficult to to breathe normally so we do a lot of apnea in the corners but this is something that you get used years after years driving a formula one cars yeah wow no really great really great breakdown there because i think you never think about for most people you never think about the neck you're never thinking about obviously the breath the losing of weight is is incredible you've talked about before that in your karting days your mental health or your like your resilience your mindset was a lot weaker how did you experience that what did that look like back in the day what do you mean by your mindset was weaker then i was extremely harsh on myself which i think now is a strength because i'm super honest with myself and i i don't like to be nice to myself whenever i do a mistake i'm very harsh and i'm very honest with myself but at the same time i think the reaction from that is extremely important the way you react to mistakes you've done inside the car this is where you manage to transform a mistake into something positive from from learning from it and when I was younger I didn't have the right reaction I would put myself so much down it will also hurt my my self-confidence now it's very different I I know that I got to a certain level because I worked hard of course because there's also a part of talent that you have when you are young.

16:40It's super important to keep the self-confidence super high in those difficult moments. Otherwise, you can lose a little bit the way, the direction in which you need to work and it can make things a bit more complicated. So that's where I was struggling when I was younger. Hey everyone, it's Jay here. My wife and I have had so much fun creating our own sparkling tea, Juni. And I've got big news for you. It's at Target. and we'd love your support. If you can go out, grab a Junie, you'll be adding adaptogens and nootropics into your life with mood boosting properties aimed at promoting a balanced and happy mind.

17:19Through our commitment to our wellness journey and striving to fuel our bodies with the healthiest ingredients, it's been our purpose to make healthy choices accessible for all, which is why Junie is now on shelves at Target. So head to our store locator at drinkjunie.com and find Junie at a target near you. Yeah, I love that you brought that out because I feel like everyone can relate to that. Like whether you drive cars or you don't, everyone can relate to the idea that we can be harsh on ourselves, we can be heavy on ourselves, we can be self-critical and judgmental. How do you, or how did you learn to like, let's say you've just done the first lap and you made a ton of mistakes or you feel like you're behind.

18:02I can imagine that it's so easy for the next two laps to just be lost in criticizing yourself and the thought in your head just being should have taken that better should have done this should have done that how did you grow to have a more positive relationship with that honesty and that self-criticism as opposed to that thought repeating in your head has that happened before have you ever felt that where you criticizing yourself during a race or there's no time for that actually no I think I think adrenaline helps us in our sports to not think too much because you haven't you haven't got the time to think you go from one corner to the other if you're already thinking about your last corner you're going to do a mistake at the next corner so you've got to mentally reset at every corners and if you did a mistake you need to reset for the next corner which is in one second so it's super quick but I think adrenaline helps you I think where I struggle more is when you finish a race on multiple laps and you are looking back at it and you're like, okay, I shouldn't have done that mistake.

19:01I should have known that. I should have prepared for that. And then I was putting myself down. And that had a much longer effect as well, because then you need to wait for the next race in order to move on. And that's in one or two weeks time. And for one or two weeks, you're like, okay, I just can't wait to be back in the karting to show what I can do. But in those last two weeks, you need to accept obviously the the view of others which was also something that was hurting me back in the past and it's it's just not not good for for for learning from your mistakes are you excited for the next race to prove yourself that's what it sounds like like there's that feeling of adrenaline of like okay i can't wait to be back on the track have you ever had a moment where you're like i don't want to go back on the track because i'm scared or i'm i'm fearing losing or failure or?

19:53Never, never, because I love so much what I do. And in every tough times, I think I always like to remember myself when everything started when I was three and a half, but I don't remember that time. So around seven or eight years old, the way I looked up to Formula One, the way I dreamt of being in a position I am today, a Ferrari Formula One driver, that's all I dreamed for. I still want to win a world championship, which is another dream of mine, and I'm working for that. But in all of the difficult moments, I always remember myself, how lucky I am to be in that position and living off what I love most, which is driving.

20:30So that reminds me how much I love the sport that I'm doing and how much I love what I do, no matter the situation I'm in. Yeah, that's a beautiful mindset to have. And how have you kept that gratitude? Like I'm listening to you right now and I just feel you sound so grateful and so happy to be here. it's not an egotistic arrogance but it's a sense of like joy and excitement like you still have that freshness with it even though you've done it for 20 years now yeah like how have you kept that freshness like what is it that makes you fall back in love with it because you're so young but at the same time you've done it for so long exactly yeah it's been 23 years that i'm in the sport now so a very very long time but um i don't know just the adrenaline that it gives me being lucky enough to work with so many incredibly talented people because all the engineers, all the mechanics, all the people around the team are people that have focused their own life in order to arrive to the position they are in now.

21:29And to be able to work with so many incredible people is a big chance. So whenever I work with them, it's always super interesting. You learn every day in this sport because it's a very complex sport. There's the driving part, of course, but then there's all the technical parts of the of the cars and yeah just being able to stay with those people speak with those super interesting people and also do the driving which is what i love the most which is uh yeah whenever i put the helmet on i've got a smile on my face because the the adrenaline that i get when uh i get on the throttle getting out the pits is something super special so um yeah i love what i do yeah it sounds like you're so fearless on the track and you've built that mindset as time has gone on what about off the track is there anything that scares you any fears that exist does does that fearlessness on the track help you off the track or is it just two different worlds and two different things no no trust me i'm i'm scared of of uh of different things snakes i hate i hate snakes i tried banjo jumping and i couldn't jump you didn't do it no but it's weird because at the same time i did parachute uh skydiving skydiving yeah and i loved it but uh but yeah you know benji jumping i couldn't jump so i was super scared at the same time as you said whenever i'm in a race car there's not one percent of me that is that is scared just because being in control helps a lot i think and uh yeah no i'm never scared there's naturally those external things that scare you as well and i wonder you know you've been through when i was when i was looking back at your journey and listening you've been through so much loss in your journey and i think for you to continue to show up in the way you are right now with love and gratitude and joy that takes even more courage than sitting in a car and and driving at that speed because it's almost sometimes like emotional emotional transformation is sometimes harder than physical and mental transformation like walk us through the losses that you've endured and and how you've been able to kind of channel that grief into growth I think it's made me grow faster I lost my father in 2017 so I was obviously very young and at this time of your career or your life you need that person that helps you grow as a man and also as a driver because he was basically my best mentor he was also a driver himself back in the day so obviously he was helping me with all his experience throughout the years that he've learned into into racing and to lose him at that age made me an adult much much faster because you get to manage your own things much earlier.

24:22Before that, I was just a kid. He will just bring me to the races. I will do what I love the most, which is driving, then flights, organization, planning. That was all on my father. And he was doing that perfectly. And he sacrificed a lot for me to get here. But then at one point, from one day to the other, there's not your father anymore. And you need to take all of these things in hands. I've got my younger brother also. My older brother was, he's 10 years older than me so he was already an adult in a way but but my younger brother was three years younger than me I had to take care of my mother as well so all of these things is it's not something that comes natural when you are 17 or 18 years old it took some time to get used to it but I think it we all got much closer in the family after after that it was a difficult moment as well to lose my father because i think i was in the age of around 14 to 19 where you are always clashing a little bit with your parents after that i think it got puts us all together much much closer than before yeah what was what was it like racing that year like you know having to show up again now where you don't have your mentor and you don't have the person who believes in you and loves you and trains you like what was that like because i think that that is that's so brave and and it requires an inner strength like what was that for you how what was it like i don't know it was on the on the tuesday of baku i had a formula 2 race i was in formula 2 not yet in formula 1 and he passed away i think on the on the tuesday and i had the flight on the wednesday to get to the race as soon as he passed away i asked myself what would he want me to do and I had no doubts I mean there was only one answer he was living for racing he loved so much racing and he loved seeing me racing and especially when I won so I knew I had to go there and do absolutely everything to try and win the race and that gave me an extra motivation as well to make him proud from from up there so it was super important for me to do that what was his reaction when you won and what was his reaction when you didn't win?

26:29I think the honesty to myself always came from my father. He was always super honest with myself, with me. He was obviously harsh whenever things weren't going the way he wanted or whenever he thought that there was a mistake that was to be made at that time of my career. But at the same time, incredibly happy whenever I won you could really see how much it meant to him so he was coming to every races absolutely every races but I will say he was a bit of a different father on races because the father tends to be always with the kids on races and always be there and pushing them and he was always doing a step back on that trying to let me grow in my own environments with my engineers me with my mechanics and get there at the end of the weekend and then have the discussion at the end of the weekend okay I saw that this you shall have done better but this was amazing and he was always super supportive and also in difficult moments I think that's all you need sometimes the good person a person that is obviously close to you that only wants good from you for you and and that tells you supportive words and I knew that this was a huge help that then I lost when I lost my father obviously there was still my mum but my mum doesn't have the technical knowledge that my my father had on on racing but it's super important to have close people that then also along your career whatever level you are at can tell you the right things at the right moment for you and uh yeah this was super important to me yeah he sounds like an amazing man he sounds like such a wonderful wonderful mentor to have in life and is there any words of advice that he said to you or something you shared with you that you feel you always kind of carry with you whether it's on race day or in life is there something that he left you that you feel you always turn towards to always stay humble and grateful i think these are the two words that he always said because even when i was six or seven years old i've had years where years that were extremely good for me at that age where i used maybe doing 24 races and i would win 18 of the 24 races and at that age you get carried away like i'm the best and this is uh yeah this is for me i'll get to formula one and he was always there charles you're only six years old formula one is a very long way uh so you need to keep working stay uh stay humble it was always always in a funny way that i was doing that i've never been arrogant in a way because i think it's a trait of our family we are all like this but um but yeah i think these are the two words that i always keep and remind me of it and especially the grateful part yeah how do you stay humble when like you said you're you're racing the dream you're driving ferrari like you know life's great like things are awesome opportunities everywhere like how and i can feel it from you by the way i believe it and and anyone who's listening or watching i'm sure you can feel it i can sense it just from from sitting with you that that it's true how have you how have you remained that way and how do you train yourself to remain that way obviously comes naturally in your family which is beautiful but but is there a practice of tempering with your ego in a way that's helped you not really yeah not really no no the the i mean to be humble i think yeah i've never really worked for for that it's just words that my father told me and i always remind myself because as i said sometimes you can have four really really good races and you feel like okay I found the rhythm and it's very easy in those very very good moments to maybe work a little bit less than in a very difficult moments and this is maybe where sometimes I remind myself Charles yes you are in a very good moment of your career but that's you still need to work as hard as in a very difficult moments because all the people that are now struggling are going to work and going to catch up at one point so you need to keep working as hard as possible where I have to do a bit no not a bit more work but where I have to think a bit more it's in the difficult moment to be still grateful to be in the position that I am because when you leave the moment and that you struggle with a race or two three races in a row lots of critics are coming to you obviously it's a sport that is quite it's getting bigger and bigger especially in the US now it's it's getting huge in Europe it's all it's always been huge but there's a lot of pressure when you are Ferrari driver as well even more so because it means a lot to to people all around the world and you need to manage those pressures in the difficult moments and it might be difficult also to manage the opinion of others in those very difficult moments and it might hurt you personally as well that's where I always try and work on remembering how grateful I am and how lucky I am to be in that in that position yeah definitely was there a criticism or that kind of feedback that like hurt you the most were you like oh that was hard to deal with that was difficult what what would that be if there was one the critics that hurts me the most are the ones that doesn't define me as a person I think in the world we are living now with social media everybody can give their opinion super easily and also people that don't know you personally yeah I remember like two or three years ago someone will say oh look how arrogant he is and these are critics that really hurts me because i know i'm not i'm not like this and um it's difficult to accept them when you are not when you are not really like that and uh i remember that hurting me personally then you always get critics on your driving or if you do a mistake in a race or whatsoever but this is part of the sport this used to hurt me back especially the first year in formula one because you get from a Formula 2 driver where there are no media nobody talks about you you do a mistake and only my mum or my dad will say okay Charles you did a mistake that's not good where you get to Formula 1 and then you are in the spotlight of absolutely everything you do a mistake and hundreds or thousands of people are speaking about it on social media which it takes a bit of time to get used to I remember the first year in Formula 1 I got into Formula 1 I was watching absolutely everything that people will say about me because it was it was new for me and then you get to learn to just make sure that you only value what people you love most think about about me and and that is only what matters to me parking shouldn't slow you down park whiz gives every driver a shortcut book ahead save up to 50 and skip the hassle of circling the block Park smarter.

33:20Park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. You don't just live in your home, you live in your neighborhood as well. So when you're shopping for a home, you want to know as much about the area around it as possible. Luckily, Homes.com has got you covered. Each listing features a comprehensive neighborhood guide from local experts. Everything you'd ever want to know about a neighborhood, including the number of homes for sale, transportation, local amenities, cultural attractions, unique qualities, and even things like medium lot size and a noise score. Homes.com.

33:54We've done your homework. Have you ever brought your magic to Walt Disney World like, hey, we came to play? Did you tip your tiara to a Creole princess or get goofy officially? Step up like a boss and save the day or see what life's like under the tree of life did you if you could would you when we come through it's true magic because we came to play bring the magic at walt disney world resort yeah and that's and that's hard to do like you said like you go from being in formula two where no one's talking about you to formula one where everyone's talking about you and i think people in the world have that experience as well that we're now living at a time where everyone can comment everyone can share everyone can say something i know i struggle to deal with it as well like i find it really difficult and i love what you said that it's always when it's about your character that it hurts more if someone says like oh you didn't get that technical thing right whatever i can live with that but it's really hard when it's about you as a human yeah in in your truth when you're like oh no no i'm not like that like i wish i've said this before i wish that I, if everyone who felt that way about me, I wish I could meet them personally.

35:08Exactly. And hold their hands and just talk to them for a second. Yeah. And say, look, this is who I truly am. And I'm so sorry that somehow you felt that I was that way. And whatever it was, I'm sorry that it made you feel that way. But I promise you, this is who I truly am. Exactly that. Exactly that. No, no, you can't. Too many people. I always try also to use the social media in order to reflect my true self then if someone doesn't like my true self and then it's like this I won't be liked by everybody else in the way by everybody in the world this is uh this is normal so I just need to be my true self but as you said it's just difficult when someone understand a trait of your personality wrong wrong and then criticize it and you're like that's that's not me and i wish i could prove you but it's it's life yeah definitely you were saying earlier that you know fear and what you're scared of and i've i've read before that you've said that you're scared of when your brother's driving yes that that is something that you get scared about so you're not scared when you're driving and you're in control but when you're not in control walk me through what goes through your mind like what is that what is that fear what's that experience because as much as i am not scared for me at all i'm still completely aware that it is such an incredibly dangerous sport as much as there's been so much safety improvements over the years it is and will always be a dangerous sport because we go at crazy speeds and anything can happen whenever i'm in control and i'm racing not one part of me thinks about the potential risk occurring doing that however when I see someone I love a lot doing exactly the same thing then you see the things very differently of course I'm always looking at the performance but for me what is the most important thing of all is his security him making it safe to the end of the race and then whatever else comes secondary it's not as enjoyable to watch racing when my brother is racing because it's just super scary and I get super super stressed what's the fastest you've ever been and when you've watched your brother what's what's the fastest he's ever been where you've been worried or was there a race where you felt like oh that was the one every every race is a torture um so do you even watch no I do you do you still watch because of the performance and you want to help him out but it's difficult because also we are on the same race weekends and most of the times i've got meetings preparing my race at the same time of his race right and so i need to look at the race but at the same time same time be focused on my meeting and this is the hardest task ever but fastest speed probably 370 kph which is around 230 miles per hour i think something like this i don't think that is the impressive part of formula one the straight line speed is fast but you don't really feel it in a car like like a formula one car it's mostly the braking the speed in the corners is something crazy and and very difficult to um to put into words and to make it understand in a way no i know i i only know how hard it is just from playing the video game yeah like that that's already you try play f1 video games like it is one of the hardest things do you play on the controller or do you have a simulator i'm the controller i haven't got the wheel yeah you need to get the wheel yeah yeah even that you just recognize just how challenging it is like it's when when you're training did you ever have you seen obviously i'm sure you've seen but when you're training i'm sure there's accidents i'm sure you see things that are that are painful to watch either with yourself or yeah uh with others you love like how is that like when you're training because obviously in f1 they've made it safer and everything but training is like training right it's not the same standards well first of all it's a very different sport to others football or whatever other sports in the world you can train as much as you want in Formula One you can't I only have three days in the Formula One car over the year and then it's the first race that is the only practice I get is three days in the new car you need to understand what's the behavior of the car that's not long at all that is nothing that is nothing and then all the rest is done virtually so you race you practice on simulators without the controller with the wheel this time but uh but you practice on simulators in order to get ready for the real thing and then you've got three days in order to get to get up to speed um to understand tons of information from the car that is mostly uh on the engineers to do that and then you need to be ready at the first qualifying session a week later this is very very very difficult then as you were saying we all know it's a dangerous sport um i've unfortunately lost my sporting godfather in 2014 jules bianchi who was an incredible driver and he had a fatal crash in in japan and lost his life there and also another friend antoine in 2019 in in belgium and these are very very difficult moments because then you are racing on this exact same track you are going through the exact same corner where a person that you were close with lost his life and this is the two moments in my entire career where you have a bit of negative thoughts going into that corner and you need to battle a bit through them in order to think about something else and and get on with it as much as it's it's difficult because a part of me was like I cannot get on with it like nothing happened.

40:51But at the same time, you've got to do that. At least as soon as you get inside the car, until you get out of the car, you need to do that. You need to focus fully on driving. Otherwise, you are never able to extract the maximum out of the car. Yeah, that balance between acceptance, we often think like it's acceptance or action. And actually, you're saying it's both together. there's an acceptance of the truth of what happened and then at the same time you have to drive and it's not either or it's not like okay i'm going to get over this and then we're going to drive because that could take forever yeah and you can't just drive and ignore it because it will come up and i remember i mean i remember one of my favorite movies is rush uh with nikki lauda and uh james hunt like that's probably one of my favorite movies and it's you see so much of the world of like the ego the the fame the success the the focus the amount of effort the competition like you you see the dangerous side of it like there's the it's it's so well done the movie i've always been a fan i wonder whether you're a fan of that movie or whether you're like ah it's not like that at all no i i love it i love it i mean i think it's um a really good representation of what the sport was back then yes yes yes not now yeah and it was amazing to see how it was back then and how it is now and how much everything has changed and I also think that as much as today when I say that I'm getting into the car and there's not one part of me that think about the danger I really believe that 30 40 years ago that was completely different for the drivers back then and they probably I think it was the driver that was willing to get the closest to death that was the fastest because they were so brave the cars i've driven all cars now and there was no safety like the where they had the legs it's just something like this off metal and if you take if you take if you take a wall that's that's it and obviously i'm sure they had that in mind somewhere which now everything is so much safer that you don't you don't think about it anymore So I think the sport has evolved like crazy since then, but it's a great movie.

43:08Yeah. No, and I love hearing that. Like, it's so interesting. Obviously, we know it's changed, but to hear about how much the cars have changed, how much safer they are, like the level of risk that a driver was taking back then is insane. It's unfathomable to even recognize, like you're saying. It's interesting for someone from the outside to even look at that. What was your favorite car that you've gone back and driven? Is there like a favorite era or like a favorite year that you've seen or exposed to and why? Why is it special? I've actually driven the Niki Lauda car. That was very, very special.

43:42Unfortunately, I had a problem on the car while driving on the brakes, which was pretty scary. But I really enjoyed driving that car. But it was completely different. I think also in terms of driving, it was super different. You had the gearbox, you had the shifter, so you had to press the clutch every time you will pass the gears, like in a normal car today. But now in a Formula One car, everything is electronic. So you pass the gears, you only press a button, you don't have to press the clutch, you don't have to press anything. And your brain can focus on many, many other things. We've got hundreds, thousands of things going on on the steering wheel that we need to touch while driving.

44:21But you haven't got to think about the gears anymore. back then I think the gas was a super important part of of driving but I really enjoyed driving this uh this Lauda old cars this was very special yeah it's amazing I can imagine the amount of attention this takes like you like we said you're on the road for a long time you're doing so many races a year you've got so many things happening in front of you while you're on the race it's natural to experience burnout like it's natural to become exhausted do you find that you're what do you do as recovery like you were saying like and you just came from the brazil race like just now like what a couple of days ago yeah two days two days ago yeah two days ago like what did you have to do in those two days to just feel normal again if normal is even a reality i love music i play piano and i've seen videos of it you're pretty good yeah kind of but good enough to uh um to enjoy it and to disconnect from everything and uh for me piano and music in general is an amazing way of disconnecting myself from the pressure of of formula one from formula one as a whole you don't sing though i don't no no no better better i don't say just just playing the piano but uh yeah playing the piano is definitely one of uh the thing i love most disconnect and and recharge my batteries and has that been a part of your life for a long long time through the whole journey actually not at all i uh i started during uh covid lots of time at home i had a simulator so i was driving a lot virtually every day but uh yeah with twitch actually but after two weeks two weeks and a half doing that all day was getting quite tiring so I bought a piano I started then and I loved it wow yeah and what is it that like how do you have you taught have you simply taught yourself to play like is that how it's worked or yes I always when we were younger my younger brother used to have a piano so I sometimes was playing on it but not I never took like courses or whatsoever and I thought COVID was a great time to try and learn it a bit more pushing a bit more and trying to understand a bit more how everything works so i took some lessons like five or six but very quickly i realized that i wasn't done for lessons so i just uh taught myself the the piano and tried to came up with melodies and musics that i enjoyed yeah sometimes i thought i will be on the piano since an hour and i will look the time and it will be four or five hours past i i just really really liked it yeah it's nice to hear that you've had and i guess covid was a surprising time where people had a bit more time or to take up hobbies and try new things.

47:06But I've always found that, especially Formula One, like it's so grueling. There's so much attention required. There's so much focus required. How has your, and we were just talking about it when you came in today, like you don't have that much time for a personal life. You've got the events in between. You've got, like, how have you made sense of that? What does your personal life look like when you do have time? How much time do you get a year, actually? Let's start there. Like, how much time do you get a year where you actually got time for your family or friends and yourself? I would say maybe 40 days.

47:4140 days. Yeah, like 30, 40 days a year. We've got two weeks, two weeks and a half in August and then two weeks, two weeks and a half in December. So for Christmas and everything. But then also with Formula One, the good thing is that we travel all over the world. But years after years, you also go to always the same places, which then you meet new people in the city and then you've got group of friends a little bit everywhere around the world which is also super nice so whenever I go to Brazil here in Los Angeles Miami I've got my group of friends there so it's always great to come back to a race obviously you want to drive as much as possible and be in the car again as soon as possible but at the same time you've got your friends there so it's not like my private life is suffering a lot from it my mom also now can follow me on on races I think it's more when I was a kid there it was a bit more difficult in a way that you are sometimes you are leaving school for two or three weeks for different races and there you don't spend as much time with your home friends I used to not speak Italian and English when I was a kid so you get to the karting tracks and you cannot really speak with anybody so that is a bit more the difficult part but at the same time i was so incredibly happy to go to the racetrack to drive karting that was making it all up for it parking shouldn't slow you down park whiz gives every driver a shortcut book ahead save up to 50 and skip the hassle of circling the block park smarter park faster park whiz download the park whiz app today and save every time you park.

49:22You don't just live in your home, you'll live in your neighborhood as well. So when you're shopping for a home, you want to know as much about the area around it as possible. Luckily, Homes.com has got you covered. Each listing features a comprehensive neighborhood guide from local experts. Everything you'd ever want to know about a neighborhood, including the number of homes for sale, transportation, local amenities, cultural attractions, unique qualities, and even things like median lot size and a noise score. homes.com we've done your homework have you ever brought your magic to walt disney world like hey we came to play did you tip your tiara to a creole princess or get goofy officially step up like a boss and save the day or see what life's like under the tree of life did you if you could would you when we come through it's true magic because we came to play bring the magic at walt disney world resort yeah are there any other athletes or any other sports or even musicians maybe even because of or architects engineers that you've kind of like looked to and been inspired by and pulled from have you studied people that you find fascinating or that kind of become your guidance and mentors even if you don't know them personally or or has it or is it very much a personal love and a personal inspiration thing i i really try to be the best version of myself uh having said that there was one driver that for me was the best of all time was elton senna i've never had the chance because i'm too young to have witnessed him in in real life but obviously through movies some books I could learn more about his person and and what he's done in Formula One and he's always been a person that I've admired and he was also the idol of my father so I think that played a part into it as well what was it specifically about the way he raced from what you've seen in footage and books what was it about him just the precision that he had at that time it was also in the time where we were mentioning before in a much more dangerous time of Formula One sadly he lost his life on the track but he was so precise and he was extremely special in monaco he was special everywhere but in monaco even more so and being in monaco watching the videos of his onboard camera of his qualifying laps around monaco was it's just crazy have any simulators ever done this where you could race alongside legendary races does that exist like have you like if you wanted to race him maybe maybe like games yeah but not like proper not like a simulator no no our simulator is crazy yeah it's in a room that is maybe this five or six times bigger than this one and it's like a huge simulator moving everywhere to try and reproduce the g-forces so now they are really pushed but you're only racing on your own so you cannot reproduce a race or whatsoever you're just doing laps on your own that simulator where is that station like where do you go in marinello okay yeah and you that's that simulator you're in all year round the three days are in the real car yes so you do three days in the real car and then everything else is on the simulator walk us through what that simulator feels like like what you described it briefly there but like walk us through like how what does it give you and what does it not give you so what it gives you extremely well is that the engineers have managed to reproduce extremely close to the real car the feeling that you get in the real car the thing that it doesn't give you and will i think never ever give you is obviously the adrenaline first because you know you're on a simulator you crash you press the restart button and you go again which in reality is a bit more difficult and also the g-forces because we've got a huge platform which reproduces the the g-forces but you're only going from right to left and then it stops in a Formula One car when you turn right then the g-forces are always there until you stop turning right which yeah makes a big difference because to be precise on a platform that is quite stable is one thing to be precise in a Formula One car with all the vibrations with all the g-forces that your body go through is a complete other so it makes things a bit more complicated.

53:42It's fascinating to even think that you have to do something for work that you don't actually get to do. And it's phenomenal how smart and astute and intense you have to be in order to make it all come together. I wanted to ask you, I was thinking about this before and I'm bringing it back because I wanted to ask you, if your father was here now and he was getting to watch you now, what do you think he'd say to you? How do you think he'd respond to the journey that you're on? I think he will be extremely proud because he passed away a year before I got into Formula One. It was very difficult because I unfortunately did not, I hadn't signed my Formula One contract, which was the ultimate goal for our family.

54:27I mean, Formula One is really where you want to get. Once you start a racing career, that's where you want to be one day. but I had lied to him two days before he passed away and I told him listen I signed my Formula One contract the year was going well I was quite confident that this will happen but I also knew it was a matter of days before he will pass away and I remember that that night that I said it to my mum and my mum was pretty angry with me telling me you shouldn't lie to your father and that stayed in me for months and luckily I signed my contract a month later he wasn't he wasn't here anymore and then I found much more peace within myself because I told myself okay I didn't lie my father and I told him the truth I anticipated things but everything is is is okay and that was a really good moment because as I said Formula One is really the goal for every driver and it was difficult to yeah accept that he will go away without knowing what was the rest but i think he will be really proud as much as on track at the moment this year not going too much into the specific but it's not the best year ever we are struggling a little bit with our car performance but yeah i'm still driving for ferrari and in formal one so he will be happy yeah that's beautiful yeah you shared that with um cristiano ronaldo has a similar story with his father like his father never really got to see him yeah become cristiano ronaldo and the idea of like how how hard it is when like you know you have a father who believes in you and loves you and wants you to become phenomenal and i don't i can't i can't remember the exact year they lost his father but his father never got to see him reach the heights that he did but of course it's beautiful to hear that i'm so glad you could share it with him that's such a special i'm so glad you got to tell him that and i'm so glad it became true me too i think i will have i will have lived uh so badly with uh with a lie like this for the rest of my life so i'm i'm happy i did everything for it to happen it happened and and he also sacrificed a lot for me i never like to say that i sacrificed anything in my life because i didn't i i just did everything that i wanted to do which was racing as much as yes I wasn't a lot of time at home when I was a kid but I was spending my time on track which was what I love doing the most he on the other hand sacrificed a lot because motorsport is unfortunately a very expensive sport he had to do saving for me to be able to do what I love most which was driving and I was aware of that and also the fact that obviously my mom he couldn't see my mom that much because he was always with me on races so i think he made many more sacrifices than than i did because for me it was always a pure pleasure is is driving a lonely sport i imagine that everyone's quite competitive like i i can't imagine drivers being friends and hanging out afterwards because i don't know i mean you tell me you tell me actually i've got a really good friend on the grid uh pierre gasly we grew up together we started in karting we did our first race together in 2005 so we were um yeah like seven eight years old we did the french championship together and we became super good friends our family are super close as well so we used to get going on holidays together and then we found ourselves in formal one now so but trust me as soon as i close the visor and i'm with a helmet he's nobody anymore and that's the same for him and we know that but whenever we are outside the car we have a really really strong friendship so So you can have friends, but it's very difficult to create friendships if you didn't know that person before getting into Formula 1 because it's such a competitive world.

58:11Everybody wants to have the upper hand. Everybody wants to do everything in his own benefit because at the end we want to win. We want to be the best on track. So there's a lot of respect, but we are not giving anything away to the others. And as much as I'm with friend with Pierre, I'm not giving him any advices or whatsoever. I just want to beat him as much as I want to beat everybody else on track. But lonely sport, I don't think it is because at the end, it's a it's a team sport. The only thing is that the team is a bit in the is working a bit in the shadow, because when you watch Formula One, you see mostly the driver driving the car.

58:51But behind that, the mechanics are making sure that they mount everything perfectly. The engineers are working in trying to optimize the car in the best possible way. Then there's a lot of strategy during the race. So there are many, many, many people in the background speaking and connected to me through the radio. So I need to speak with the guys in the pits while I'm driving. And it's a big part of racing. what are your dreams and visions of you know wanting to be one of the best and winning a world championship what would that mean to you like how important is that what does that mean to you what would it feel like like what what fuels you and drives you to go in that direction just to be the number one just the feeling of the victory obviously i i mean i won few races in formula one and the feeling that you get once you get that win is incredible because you know you've done the best on track but it depends on so many other people doing the right thing is that whenever you do it it's such an incredible joy not only for you but for more than 1500 people that are back at the factory in maranello working for the formula one program so it's uh it's it's crazy there are so many people involved and whenever you achieve that as a team it's such an incredible feeling yeah victory the the taste of victory is what motivates me every morning i wake up and i think about that every day that is a bit more difficult to wake up and go in training i think about winning a world championship one day and the feeling that it gives me and so yeah this is what motivates me yeah let's manifest it right now like you did with what you said to your father like let's let's fast forward and it's manifested the world championships here what would you what would you say to that self from here what would you say to your future self well done first that is a pretty easy easy one um to remember the all your career yeah yeah your journey uh and to remember every single difficult moments where you thought you wouldn't make it these difficult moments that i went through my career sometimes you tend to think I'm not going to make it to Formula 1.