Charles Leclerc swore as he admitted he was crying in his helmet while still racing in the Monaco Grand Prix.
Leclerc, who was born and raised in the Principality, has come close to winning his home race before but had plenty of bad luck. But the Formula 1 gods were smiling down at him on Sunday as he led the whole Grand Prix to finally take the victory he had dreamt about for so long.
The Ferrari driver struggled to contain his emotions as he took part in his post-race interview on the start-finish straight. And in the cool down room while waiting for the podium ceremony he revealed that the waterworks had begun long before then.
Speaking with team-mate Carlos Sainz and second-placed Oscar Piastri, Leclerc spoke of how the emotions got to him while he was still behind the wheel of his car.
As they settled in the cool down room, Sainz was the first to speak and wasted no time before grilling his fellow Ferrari driver. "So did you cry or not?" asked the Spaniard. And Leclerc replied: "Mate, the emotions were coming up two laps from the end and I was struggling to see! It started to get there and I was like, 'F***, no Charles, not now'."
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Luckily, he managed to see enough through the tears of joy to guide his car home safely. And afterwards, his voice was breaking as he described how much the win meant to him - and also paid tribute to his father, Herve, who died in 2017 before he could see his son make it to F1.
The 26-year-old said: "It's the race that made me dream of becoming a Formula 1 driver one day. It was a difficult race emotionally. Already 15 laps before the end I was just hoping that nothing would happen.
"I was thinking of my dad a lot more than I thought while driving. He gave everything for me to be here. It was a dream of ours to race here and to win, so it's unbelievable.
"At first, I thought we would have quite a lot of margin but we knew there were 78 laps to do on the same tyres which was very very difficult. But we did a great management of the tyres and there was a big part of the race where we had to manage the gap to George [Russell].
"In the last 10 laps I could push a bit more and the car felt amazing. I just want to thank the team for doing such incredible work over the past few months and for giving me the opportunity to finally win this race. This is a very special feeling."
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