How Hamilton, Leclerc and Piastri stack up – to the man who’s engineered them all

“We are somewhere in the past for these drivers – from their start points to the final target. And we are super happy to see that they have success.”

No Formula 1 driver has immaculately appeared at the top level. Now a decade ago, even Max Verstappen made the briefest stop in the junior categories before his graduation to grand prix racing.

Back then, he’d just scrapped closely with eventual winner Esteban Ocon in the 2014 Formula 3 European championship in the much-missed series away from the F1 support bill. Verstappen’s Van Amersfoort Racing team took on Ocon’s Prema Powerteam squad.

Fast-forward to 2025 and Ocon’s new team-mate at his latest F1 team, Haas, is delving back to the Frenchman’s junior career for advice on how to race him.

“I know from Rene [Rosin, team boss of what is now Prema Racing] and from the people at the team what he’s like as a driver,” Oliver Bearman told Autosport in an interview last weekend.

There’s plenty of logic in this for Bearman. As he works to integrate himself within the Haas operation, at this stage he’s still more familiar with the Prema organisation with which he raced in Formula 3 and Formula 2 these past two years.

And there are links with the Italian single-seater powerhouse right across the 2025 F1 field.

Ocon’s now former Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly scored the 2016 GP2 crown with the team, while his current stablemate – Jack Doohan – raced for Prema in Formula 4 in 2018. Just across the midfield, Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll won the 2016 Euro F3 title with the same team – into which his father invested significantly. New Sauber hire Gabriel Bortoleto also raced in F4 with Prema.

But three more 2025 drivers are linked in a deeper way: Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri. The last two are more Prema junior champions (Leclerc the F2 winner in 2017, Piastri scooping the same prize with the same team in 2021, after he’d impressively won the F3 title for Prema the year before too).

Hamilton’s junior career sits much further into motorsport’s past. But, while he never raced for Prema, he did work with its technical director, Guillaume Capietto – whose words we began with above.

“[Hamilton] came many times at the workshop. He even came to have dinner with the team at home. He was a nice guy to work with”
Guillaume Capietto

The Frenchman occupied a similar position for another crack junior squad, ART Grand Prix, back in 2005 and 2006. These were the years of Hamilton’s first alliance with Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur (ART’s founder) that yielded the 2005 Euro F3 and 2006 GP2 crowns (although the former came while Vasseur’s F3 arm was still called ASM, before being rebranded to align with its GP2 division for 2008).

But given how the 2024 F1 season ended, this trio must all be considered title contenders heading into the upcoming campaign. Therefore, as Bearman is doing with Ocon, it’s a useful exercise to look back into their successful pasts for insight into what might happen in the new season.

For this, there are few better placed to comment than Capietto. We spoke to him as the 2024 F2 season finished along with F1 in Abu Dhabi last month.

Then, Capietto was still working with new Mercedes F1 driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli – a multiple Prema champion at F4 and then Formula Regional level, and Bearman’s team-mate last year. But, given his obvious lack of results at the top level as a category rookie and his new team’s dizzying form fluctuations in this F1 rules era, he must be treated as a separate entity at this stage.

Capietto worked alongside new Mercedes driver Antonelli during his sole F2 campaign last year

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

Hamilton’s enormous ensuing F1 successes mean his skills at the top level are already well known. But it’s interesting to recall that during his crushingly-successful Euro F3 campaign in 2005 – when Capietto was ASM’s lead F3 engineer, a role he later took up at ART in GP2 as well – he displayed the tyre management and fine racecraft so important in his F1 title run with Mercedes.

On the latter factor in 2005, he enjoyed scintillating scraps with former F1 title rival Sebastian Vettel. But when Hamilton arrived at ASM after a disappointing first season in Euro F3 with Manor Motorsport in 2004, Capietto says he was “a bit brut [raw] in terms of driving skills at the beginning”.

“Not braking super well, not having a lot of technique in place, like taking marks for braking for lines, etc,” he adds. “He was doing a lot of things on feeling and so we had a period during the winter where we worked a lot on this.

“But then from when he started to understand that he needed to do this in addition to following his natural talent, he did a super job. He won 15 races, 13 pole positions.

“When we were going in qualifying, you knew that he would do something. And also, the F3 Euroseries at this stage, the qualifying was in the morning and, most of the time in Germany, it was all damp or wet or mixed. And when it was mixed condition etc, sometimes he was like one second in front of everybody at the beginning of the session. A lot of car control.

“He was also super keen to learn and to discover the world. [Plus], how we worked in the team. He came many times at the workshop. He even came to have dinner with the team at home. He was a nice guy to work with.”

Hamilton’s best years at Mercedes came in the harmonious environment he and Valtteri Bottas helped forge between 2017 and 2021. Now Hamilton is being partnered with Leclerc, there’s much interest in how they will get along at Ferrari.

Handily for both, Capietto recalls that – after he’d switched from ART to Prema for 2016 – Leclerc’s successful F2 campaign contained exactly that spirit. This was when he raced alongside another then Ferrari junior, Antonio Fuoco – now a highly-rated part of the manufacturer’s World Endurance Championship squad.

Hamilton was run by Capietto to win the 2005 F3 Euroseries crown for Fred Vasseur’s ASM team

Photo by: Sutton Images

“It was a little bit different because I think, when Charles came, he had already a bit more experience and he was arriving like a confirmed driver in the team,” recalls Capietto. “Where we took Lewis at an earlier stage.

“But then we also won the year before [with Gasly in 2016 GP2] – like for Lewis [ART drivers won the 2004 and 2005 Euro F3 and GP2 titles, with the latter going to his then friend Nico Rosberg]. And so there is always this pressure when the team won the year before that you know that, if you do a good job, you should also win the title [in 2017 for Leclerc].

“The ambiance was also good [in 2017]. We had two Ferrari drivers, so Ferrari was quite involved in following the drivers. We had a good relationship with Massimo Rivola [then Ferrari Driver Academy director].

“It was a little bit different because I think, when Charles came, he had already a bit more experience and he was arriving like a confirmed driver in the team” Guillaume Capietto

“The year was nice and Charles is a nice person to work with – always funny. Antonio also played a role in this because they were friends together – putting a good atmosphere in the team in general.”

There is a parallel in how both Hamilton and Leclerc were under pressure from their respective benefactors at the same stage – famously McLaren for the former – to win junior titles at the first attempt to progress further up the single-seater ladder.

For both, such a clause preceded their F1 promotions over a decade apart in 2007 and 2018, respectively. But Capietto says this was less intense for Leclerc – given how he quickly amassed a run of seven poles for the opening eight feature races of the 2017 F2 season. He translated this into four wins (his first in Bahrain coming via an attacking sprint race strategy) and a hefty mid-season points lead.

For Leclerc, that was even over drivers with considerably more experience in the rebranded GP2 category, which at the time had not been won by a rookie since Nico Hulkenberg did so (for ART) back in 2009.

Gasly’s success for Prema the previous year put Leclerc under immediate pressure in 2017

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

“Honestly, I don’t know if he really had to feel so much pressure,” says Capietto of Leclerc.

“Because the beginning of the year was a bit more difficult because there was some drivers with more experience – like [now FE stalwart Oliver] Rowland and [former racing driver Artem] Markelov. And especially in the tyre management, we were not always the best in the first races.

“But, quite quickly, we were strong in quali. So, we were starting from pole position a lot of races and we managed it quite well. That removed a bit of pressure because we knew we had the pace and we knew we were able to win races.

“And we didn’t have a lot of problems. At the end I think you feel the pressure when you fight for the title from mid-season and it’s difficult when the other ones are as quick as you. We had, let’s say, a small pace advantage that makes things a bit easier to handle.”

When asked what his experience of working with both 2025 Ferrari F1 drivers has taught him about the potential of their partnership, Capietto replies: “It was some years in between, so it’s always difficult to compare guys.

“But I think they are both talented, of course. Both have quite good car control and are able when the conditions are mixed or damp, etc, to handle that.

“And I think Charles was coming already more with all the things like I said before – the driving maps, the driving reference and how to drive the car theoretically. He had a better background arriving to Prema. We worked on this a bit more with Lewis [at ART].

“But at the end they are both doing well and combining talent and skills when learning and working.”

Piastri will have F1 title aspirations after helping McLaren score its first constructors’ crown since 1998

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

Piastri sits in a somewhat different position. The McLaren driver heads into 2025 buoyed from being part of the team that secured the orange squad’s first constructors’ championship in 26 years. 

At the same time, his brutal attack on team-mate Lando Norris at Monza last year chimes with how other Prema insiders view his potential as an F1 title contender in his own right this time.

That, beneath his ultra-laid-back persona, lies a driver already possessed of the killer instinct required to snare a tight championship fight even within the pressure cooking F1 interest levels. Piastri’s part in that Abu Dhabi crash with Verstappen showed just how he will meet fire with fire.

“He’s [Piastri] maybe a bit more mathematic – doing things in a plan. Whereas, maybe Lewis was sometimes going more on his feelings” 
Guillaume Capietto

“He looked much more relaxed,” Capietto says of the two seasons Piastri spent with Prema while a Renault/Alpine junior in 2020 and 2021.

“But he also had a bit of a pressure and he’s also a good worker. Yes, sometimes you felt that you’d say something and [ask yourself], ‘Did he understand? Did he listen?’ So, you repeat, but at the end he’s more there than you think.

“He’s also talented. He’s maybe a bit more mathematic – doing things in a plan. Whereas, maybe Lewis was sometimes going more on his feelings. That’s at this stage 20 years ago, now he’s probably very different!

“[In 2021 in F2] we were also with [Piastri] and [now Prema IndyCar driver] Robert Shwartzman, which was also a good team where both were friends and there was also a good atmosphere in the team. Honestly, quite similar to the year with Leclerc and Fuoco.”

That any junior drivers will one day go on to fight for the ultimate F1 prize is “our target”, Capietto concludes.

“We have had a lot of drivers in F1 for Prema or myself coming from ART,” he says. “And we are proud to have participated to their success and to have given something at one point that helped them to do this.”

Can an ex-Prema driver strike in the drivers’ championship battle this season?

Photo by: Getty Images