SILVERSTONE, England, July 5 (Reuters) - Charles Leclerc spoke of how he had shut out negative noise and changed narratives as the Ferrari driver celebrated his first Formula One win since 2024 at Silverstone on Sunday.
The Monegasque has struggled to extract the most from his car this season while teammate and seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton has hit a sweet spot.
Hamilton, now 41 years old, triumphed in Spain last month to end the Italian team's win drought, also dating back to 2024, and answer the critics who last year, when he failed to get on the podium, had suggested the Briton might be over the hill.
This year Leclerc has come under fire, particularly after he crashed twice on home streets in Monaco. He also crashed in Spain and said he felt ashamed.
"It means a lot because when things get tough, and that's literally the situation I've been in the last few races, obviously there's a lot of negativity around me in general with narratives being created," Leclerc said after the ninth win of his career and first since the October 2024 U.S. Grand Prix in Austin.
"And it's never a nice environment to work in."
Leclerc said he was "super-proud" of his team for helping him to regain the missing feeling with the car at a fast track where confidence is key. Sunday was Ferrari's second win in three races.
He said he had tried to "cancel the noise" as much as possible, and tried not to look at his mobile phone but tofocus on what was important and relevant.
"Things are said and you go from hero to zero, from zero to hero, in like two days in this sport," he added.
"So my job was really to just try and cancel that noise, to not look at anything, to not listen to anything. And I know that I didn't become a bad driver from one day to the other. It was just a matter of finding that feeling with the car.
"I was very strong for the first part of the season, then I lost a bit of feeling with the car. We changed quite a few things with the car and it took a bit more time than what I had wished to get back to the level I wanted."
Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium is next, a similarly fast circuit to Silverstone, and Leclerc goes there fourth in the championship and 39 points adrift of third-placed Hamilton, who finished third on Sunday.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; editing by Clare Fallon)
