Charles Leclerc saysꦅ he never considered quitting motorsport following Jules Bianchi’s horrific ܫcrash during the 2014 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix.

Bianchi, who was Leclerc’s godfather and mentor, suffered severe head injuries afte♑r crashing in wet conditions at Suzu♚ka and died nine months later aged 25.

The Marussia driver, like Leclerc🀅, had risen through the junior ranks as a Ferrari Driver Academy member and had been tipped for a successful future at the Maranello squad. Having triumphed to back-to-back titles in GP3 and Formula 2, Leclerc was handed his F1 debut in 2018 with Sauber.

An impressive rookie cam🍸paign earned him promotion to Ferrari for the 2019 season, and Leclerc, who has had to deal with two personal tragedies following the sudden death of his father Herve in 2017, says he has always been motiva🅺ted to honour Bianchi’s memory.

"There was definitely no thoughts any time to stop my career because of that,” Leclerc . "From the beginning when you go into this sport, you know how dangerous it is. It 𝓰will never be a safe sport. 

"Of course, the cars are getting safer a♎nd saf🌌er but, when you are going at 340km/h, it can never be safe. This I knew from the start. And I just wanted then to be good for him because he had taught me many things.

"He had always pushed me forward and helped me to get better, and the only thought I ꦫhad when this happened was just to do good for him to make him proud."

Leclerc twice came close to claiming his maiden grand prix victory in Bahrain and Austria, until late engine trouble (Bahrain) and a charge from Max Verstappen (Austria) de꧑nied him top sp🐎ot on the rostrum.

He was left disappointed that a crash in qualifying in Baku denied him the chance to fight for pole position, and for a scrappy home race in Monaco as he attempted to fight his way through the field after a qualifying strategy blunder had left him out of positio♒n on the grid.

But after taking four successive podiums, Leclerc now sits just three points behind fourth-placed Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel in the 2019 drivers’ standings. The 21✨-year-old has credited his ability to turnaround his form due to mental training he has been doing since the early stages of his career.

"It is always very difficult to put into words because it is not like physical training, where you lift weig🌼hts and you can definitely see the difference where you are lifting more weight week after week," he explained.

"It is a little bit the same process. But the results, you don't see them as easily because it is about how you are feeling and how you are🍌 dealing with pressure. So it comes a lot more naturally.

"But I have a lot of tests to see more the res🍒ults of it. And it is all about concentration, being calm in the tense moments, which is very important, being able to calm you🍨rself as quickly as possible.

"F1 weekends are fulꦐl of things and any time that you have five minutes, you need to use it as well as possible to calm down. So all of these small details make a small difference in the end."

“Hopeꦑfully the first win to come very soon," he added. "And many more after. But at the end the tar♛get is the first win now, trying to take the opportunity whenever we have it.

"In the future... my dream as a child was being a𝔍 world champion. Now I am finally in a team where I think this can be a reality so we need to keep working and hopefully this will happen one day."