There's an old saying in sport particularly apposite to 20-year-old Sauber driver Charles Leclerc: if you're good enough, you're old enough.
Since Ferrari's growing impatience with Kimi Raikkonen emerged last month and the prospects of Leclerc being promoted from the team's junior ranks to the frontline dramatically improved, questions have been asked about whether the Monegasque is ready.
The evidence says he is. Emphatically. Or, to be more precise, he's as ready as he can be.
It remains to be seen if Ferrari commits to making the change. Since his hurry-up after a lacklustre Canadian Grand Prix weekend, Raikkonen has strung together a hat-trick of podiums tempered only by the fact he squandered the potential speed to win two of them. But the debate over Leclerc's readiness must be put to bed.
Too many focus on what Leclerc hasn't done. He hasn't won grands prix, he hasn't driven for a top team, he hasn't fought for a world championship, he hasn't finished higher than sixth in an F1 race.
This is a pointless position to take in making a decision on Leclerc - it's only really relevant if weighing up the choice to take Leclerc or a proven winner to lead the team immediately. Daniel Ricciardo, for example.
And Ricciardo, remember, had not finished higher than seventh in a grand prix prior to his promotion to Red Bull's A-team for 2014. That season he was the only non-Mercedes driver to win a race - a feat he achieved three times.
Every driver had yet to win grands prix or fight for a world championship before they got their shot with a race winning team. Instead, it's what Leclerc has already done that proves he's ready to have that chance.
The front of the F1 field is a pressure-cooker environment, one that's impossible to simulate. Nothing can prepare you for the scrutiny, the mental challenge, the drain of a 21-race season when an off-lap, let along an off-weekend, gives rise to questions and doubts.
But the closest analogue to it is precisely the situation Leclerc is in. The consistency of performances makes Leclerc so impressive in a part of the field where tiny margins can make the difference between points and going home with nothing.
Leclerc has taken to F1 like the proverbial duck to water and answered every question asked of him
He's scored in five out of six races, and would have made that six out of seven but for his loose wheel at Silverstone. Leclerc is not a driver turning in flashy peaks every three races, he's relentlessly banging in performances.
The only other driver outside of the big three teams to match Leclerc's five points finishes in the last seven races is Carlos Sainz Jr at Renault. So by definition, Leclerc is one of the standout performers - in fact, the standout performer.
He's also burying a team-mate in Marcus Ericsson who is no mug. The Swede has no answer to Leclerc's qualifying pace in particular, which is more evidence of Leclerc's excellence.
That Leclerc is also doing this in his first season, after years in which he's largely earned rave reviews for his performances in GP3 and Formula 2, is critically important. He's taken to F1 like the proverbial duck to water and answered every question asked of him.
It's true that spending another season at Sauber can only make him a better driver, but only by a small margin given the learning curve he has been flying along inevitably levels off. The argument that he needs more time would hold water if Ferrari was looking to him as a team leader and a title shot, but he's needed as a wing man to Vettel.
He would go to Ferrari with a view to emerging as Vettel's long-term successor. Of course, things are never as elegant as that and it's rare a team is able to align the eventual decline of an established star and the rise of a new one. So the strongest case against Leclerc might be that he will upset the established balance of the team.
Even if Leclerc comes in and challenges or even eclipses Vettel, not a completely implausible scenario given the Ricciardo example, then it's win/win for Ferrari. There will be disruption, but if he can either push Vettel to continue to raise his game, or somehow outperform him, then Ferrari will be better off. The fact is, succession planning can never come too early.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves. What is true is that we can't be sure how Leclerc will respond to the unique pressures of Ferrari. Some default to the age and experience argument, but those are not the relevant criteria for judging Leclerc's readiness.
For example, one of Ferrari's most infamous flops was Ivan Capelli. The last Italian driver to land a full-time seat with Ferrari (Nicola Larini, Luca Badoer and Giancarlo Fisichella all subsequently raced as stand-ins) was axed with two races remaining in 1992 having struggled alongside Jean Alesi.
Capelli was very well-appointed. An Italian F3 and International Formula 3000 champion who had turned in some star performances for March/Leyton House, almost winning the 1990 French Grand Prix. But that season, he wilted.
The circumstances were enormously difficult, for the Ferrari F92A was a poor car, so that's a mitigating factor. But Capelli came into that year with five full seasons in F1 under his belt and turned 30 during the season, so he had the experience and the track record and it still went wrong.
"When you are under pressure as a Ferrari driver, everything becomes difficult," said Capelli when asked about the Ferrari environment several years ago. "Even coming out of the pitlane and going onto the track because you can feel that there is not the right support around you."
Even with all that preparation, Capelli wasn't able to deal with the situation and the intense scrutiny he came under in the Italian media.
Granted, the circumstances were terrible and given his ability, in a better year and in the less chaotic version of Ferrari that was to follow (Jean Todt joined and gave the team renewed direction in the middle of the following season) perhaps he would have thrived. But experience and age did not insulate him from failure.
Nothing can fully prepare you for what awaits at Ferrari, all you can do is pass all the tests up to the point where you get thrown into the deep end. As Leclerc has done.
Leclerc is unquestionably young and would be the second-youngest Ferrari driver in world championship history. Ricardo Rodriguez put his Ferrari on the front row for the 1961 Italian Grand Prix at the age of 19 on debut. The second-youngest is Jacky Ickx, who had just turned 23 when he made his Ferrari bow.
Ferrari has avoided young drivers in recent years. Felipe Massa is often cited as an example, and he is the ninth-youngest Ferrari driver, but was only just short of his 25th birthday with three seasons with Sauber and a year of testing for Ferrari under his belt.
Youngest Ferrari drivers
1 Ricardo Rodriguez - 19 years, 213 days
2 Jacky Ickx - 23 years, 5 days
3 Mike Hawthorn - 23 years, 289 days
4 Chris Amon - 23 years, 297 days
5 Gianni Morbidelli - 23 years, 300 days
6 Peter Collins - 24 years, 83 days
7 Cesare Perdisa - 24 years, 90 days
8 Eugenio Castellotti - 24 years, 258 days
9 Felipe Massa - 24 years, 327 days
10 Niki Lauda - 24 years, 331 days
By and large, Ferrari's youngest drivers are a successful bunch. Hawthorn and Lauda both won titles during their stint at Ferrari, while Massa, Collins and Ickx all came close. And Amon, despite never winning a world championship race, was one of the most celebrated drivers of his era.
Rodriguez was tipped for great things when he lost his life in the build up to the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix on loan to Rob Walker Racing, while great things were also expected of Castellotti on top of his sportscar achievements before his untimely death. The passing of the latter directly led to Perdisa's retirement.
That leaves only Morbidelli, who started only one race for Ferrari - the 1991 Australian Grand Prix as stand-in for Alain Prost - and scored half a point for sixth place.
So it's not a bad bunch by any means, suggesting going into Ferrari young is not a poisoned chalice - albeit with the caveat that there are few truly young Ferrari drivers by today's standards.
In terms of world championship race starts, Leclerc should have 21 by the end of this season. Remarkably, only 25 of the 77 drivers who have raced for Ferrari in the world championship had more experience than that prior to their first appearances! So he's cramming a lot into his first year in F1.
It is true to say Leclerc would be one of the youngest drivers to race for a top team. There have only been five instances of a driver starting a season with a team that won a race in the year concerned at a younger age than Leclerc will be next year - three of them being Max Verstappen. The others were Rodriguez in 1961, which was a bit-part role, and Sebastian Vettel with Toro Rosso in 2008. And Toro Rosso's Monza win that year was an underdog anomaly rather than the team's expected performance.
For the most part the youngest drivers in top teams generally go on to be successful. A glance through the top 30 instances shows largely successful drivers. In fact, there's only two cases of drivers appearing who didn't claim an F1 podium finish - Zsolt Baumgartner (an anomaly thanks to Jordan's unlikely victory in the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix with Fisichella) and 1984 Brabham part-time Corrado Fabi. The majority went on to win races.
Leclerc is relatively inexperienced. He would be the second-youngest Ferrari driver in world championship history, and the least experienced in terms of starts since Stefan Johansson was drafted in early in 1985 to replace Rene Arnoux. But he has shown he is good enough.
None of the above guarantees Leclerc will succeed if he is promoted. What it does prove is that you don't need a hundred grands prix under your belt to thrive in a top team, further weakening the age/experience argument.
At Ferrari there will still be things to learn and there will be the odd mistake. But it's time to move on to the next learning curve
Leclerc has met every challenge presented to him so far. What's more, he's approached things in a methodical way, learned from his mistakes and got better as the season has progressed. That's an approach that will serve him well in Ferrari.
Even in half-a-season, there are countless examples. Leclerc himself stresses that he looks closely at "the negatives" as he bids to tackle his weaknesses.
There's plenty of evidence of that this year in the way he dialled things back in qualifying after admitting he was "pushing way too much", the overhaul of car set-up approach for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix that allowed him to get more out of himself and recognising after the Chinese GP that sometimes the driver isn't best placed to call strategy.
It can take some drivers years to learn such things, if they take it on board at all. Leclerc has a mature head on his shoulders that makes him ideally suited to moving up, because there's no way he will fall into the trap of thinking he has already made it just because of his promotion. That, more than anything, will stand him in good stead should he be cast into the Ferrari maelstrom.
If Leclerc does race a Ferrari in 2019, there will still be things to learn and there will be the odd mistake. But it's time to move on to the next learning curve.
Sometimes you've got to step up to the next level to have the chance to prove you can cut it there.
It's time. Leclerc is good enough, so he's definitely old enough.
There's an old saying in sport particularly apposite to 20-year-old Sauber driver Charles Leclerc: if you're good enough, you're old enough.
Since Ferrari's growing impatience with Kimi Raikkonen emerged last month and the prospects of Leclerc being promoted from the team's junior ranks to the frontline dramatically improved, questions have been asked about whether the Monegasque is ready.
The evidence says he is. Emphatically. Or, to be more precise, he's as ready as he can be.
It remains to be seen if Ferrari commits to making the change. Since his hurry-up after a lacklustre Canadian Grand Prix weekend, Raikkonen has strung together a hat-trick of podiums tempered only by the fact he squandered the potential speed to win two of them. But the debate over Leclerc's readiness must be put to bed.
Too many focus on what Leclerc hasn't done. He hasn't won grands prix, he hasn't driven for a top team, he hasn't fought for a world championship, he hasn't finished higher than sixth in an F1 race.
This is a pointless position to take in making a decision on Leclerc - it's only really relevant if weighing up the choice to take Leclerc or a proven winner to lead the team immediately. Daniel Ricciardo, for example.
And Ricciardo, remember, had not finished higher than seventh in a grand prix prior to his promotion to Red Bull's A-team for 2014. That season he was the only non-Mercedes driver to win a race - a feat he achieved three times.
Every driver had yet to win grands prix or fight for a world championship before they got their shot with a race winning team. Instead, it's what Leclerc has already done that proves he's ready to have that chance.
The front of the F1 field is a pressure-cooker environment, one that's impossible to simulate. Nothing can prepare you for the scrutiny, the mental challenge, the drain of a 21-race season when an off-lap, let along an off-weekend, gives rise to questions and doubts.
But the closest analogue to it is precisely the situation Leclerc is in. The consistency of performances makes Leclerc so impressive in a part of the field where tiny margins can make the difference between points and going home with nothing.
Leclerc has taken to F1 like the proverbial duck to water and answered every question asked of him
He's scored in five out of six races, and would have made that six out of seven but for his loose wheel at Silverstone. Leclerc is not a driver turning in flashy peaks every three races, he's relentlessly banging in performances.
The only other driver outside of the big three teams to match Leclerc's five points finishes in the last seven races is Carlos Sainz Jr at Renault. So by definition, Leclerc is one of the standout performers - in fact, the standout performer.
He's also burying a team-mate in Marcus Ericsson who is no mug. The Swede has no answer to Leclerc's qualifying pace in particular, which is more evidence of Leclerc's excellence.
That Leclerc is also doing this in his first season, after years in which he's largely earned rave reviews for his performances in GP3 and Formula 2, is critically important. He's taken to F1 like the proverbial duck to water and answered every question asked of him.
It's true that spending another season at Sauber can only make him a better driver, but only by a small margin given the learning curve he has been flying along inevitably levels off. The argument that he needs more time would hold water if Ferrari was looking to him as a team leader and a title shot, but he's needed as a wing man to Vettel.
He would go to Ferrari with a view to emerging as Vettel's long-term successor. Of course, things are never as elegant as that and it's rare a team is able to align the eventual decline of an established star and the rise of a new one. So the strongest case against Leclerc might be that he will upset the established balance of the team.
Even if Leclerc comes in and challenges or even eclipses Vettel, not a completely implausible scenario given the Ricciardo example, then it's win/win for Ferrari. There will be disruption, but if he can either push Vettel to continue to raise his game, or somehow outperform him, then Ferrari will be better off. The fact is, succession planning can never come too early.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves. What is true is that we can't be sure how Leclerc will respond to the unique pressures of Ferrari. Some default to the age and experience argument, but those are not the relevant criteria for judging Leclerc's readiness.
For example, one of Ferrari's most infamous flops was Ivan Capelli. The last Italian driver to land a full-time seat with Ferrari (Nicola Larini, Luca Badoer and Giancarlo Fisichella all subsequently raced as stand-ins) was axed with two races remaining in 1992 having struggled alongside Jean Alesi.
Capelli was very well-appointed. An Italian F3 and International Formula 3000 champion who had turned in some star performances for March/Leyton House, almost winning the 1990 French Grand Prix. But that season, he wilted.
The circumstances were enormously difficult, for the Ferrari F92A was a poor car, so that's a mitigating factor. But Capelli came into that year with five full seasons in F1 under his belt and turned 30 during the season, so he had the experience and the track record and it still went wrong.
"When you are under pressure as a Ferrari driver, everything becomes difficult," said Capelli when asked about the Ferrari environment several years ago. "Even coming out of the pitlane and going onto the track because you can feel that there is not the right support around you."
Even with all that preparation, Capelli wasn't able to deal with the situation and the intense scrutiny he came under in the Italian media.
Granted, the circumstances were terrible and given his ability, in a better year and in the less chaotic version of Ferrari that was to follow (Jean Todt joined and gave the team renewed direction in the middle of the following season) perhaps he would have thrived. But experience and age did not insulate him from failure.
Nothing can fully prepare you for what awaits at Ferrari, all you can do is pass all the tests up to the point where you get thrown into the deep end. As Leclerc has done.
Leclerc is unquestionably young and would be the second-youngest Ferrari driver in world championship history. Ricardo Rodriguez put his Ferrari on the front row for the 1961 Italian Grand Prix at the age of 19 on debut. The second-youngest is Jacky Ickx, who had just turned 23 when he made his Ferrari bow.
Ferrari has avoided young drivers in recent years. Felipe Massa is often cited as an example, and he is the ninth-youngest Ferrari driver, but was only just short of his 25th birthday with three seasons with Sauber and a year of testing for Ferrari under his belt.
Youngest Ferrari drivers
1 Ricardo Rodriguez - 19 years, 213 days
2 Jacky Ickx - 23 years, 5 days
3 Mike Hawthorn - 23 years, 289 days
4 Chris Amon - 23 years, 297 days
5 Gianni Morbidelli - 23 years, 300 days
6 Peter Collins - 24 years, 83 days
7 Cesare Perdisa - 24 years, 90 days
8 Eugenio Castellotti - 24 years, 258 days
9 Felipe Massa - 24 years, 327 days
10 Niki Lauda - 24 years, 331 days
By and large, Ferrari's youngest drivers are a successful bunch. Hawthorn and Lauda both won titles during their stint at Ferrari, while Massa, Collins and Ickx all came close. And Amon, despite never winning a world championship race, was one of the most celebrated drivers of his era.
Rodriguez was tipped for great things when he lost his life in the build up to the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix on loan to Rob Walker Racing, while great things were also expected of Castellotti on top of his sportscar achievements before his untimely death. The passing of the latter directly led to Perdisa's retirement.
That leaves only Morbidelli, who started only one race for Ferrari - the 1991 Australian Grand Prix as stand-in for Alain Prost - and scored half a point for sixth place.
So it's not a bad bunch by any means, suggesting going into Ferrari young is not a poisoned chalice - albeit with the caveat that there are few truly young Ferrari drivers by today's standards.
In terms of world championship race starts, Leclerc should have 21 by the end of this season. Remarkably, only 25 of the 77 drivers who have raced for Ferrari in the world championship had more experience than that prior to their first appearances! So he's cramming a lot into his first year in F1.
It is true to say Leclerc would be one of the youngest drivers to race for a top team. There have only been five instances of a driver starting a season with a team that won a race in the year concerned at a younger age than Leclerc will be next year - three of them being Max Verstappen. The others were Rodriguez in 1961, which was a bit-part role, and Sebastian Vettel with Toro Rosso in 2008. And Toro Rosso's Monza win that year was an underdog anomaly rather than the team's expected performance.
For the most part the youngest drivers in top teams generally go on to be successful. A glance through the top 30 instances shows largely successful drivers. In fact, there's only two cases of drivers appearing who didn't claim an F1 podium finish - Zsolt Baumgartner (an anomaly thanks to Jordan's unlikely victory in the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix with Fisichella) and 1984 Brabham part-time Corrado Fabi. The majority went on to win races.
Leclerc is relatively inexperienced. He would be the second-youngest Ferrari driver in world championship history, and the least experienced in terms of starts since Stefan Johansson was drafted in early in 1985 to replace Rene Arnoux. But he has shown he is good enough.
None of the above guarantees Leclerc will succeed if he is promoted. What it does prove is that you don't need a hundred grands prix under your belt to thrive in a top team, further weakening the age/experience argument.
At Ferrari there will still be things to learn and there will be the odd mistake. But it's time to move on to the next learning curve
Leclerc has met every challenge presented to him so far. What's more, he's approached things in a methodical way, learned from his mistakes and got better as the season has progressed. That's an approach that will serve him well in Ferrari.
Even in half-a-season, there are countless examples. Leclerc himself stresses that he looks closely at "the negatives" as he bids to tackle his weaknesses.
There's plenty of evidence of that this year in the way he dialled things back in qualifying after admitting he was "pushing way too much", the overhaul of car set-up approach for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix that allowed him to get more out of himself and recognising after the Chinese GP that sometimes the driver isn't best placed to call strategy.
It can take some drivers years to learn such things, if they take it on board at all. Leclerc has a mature head on his shoulders that makes him ideally suited to moving up, because there's no way he will fall into the trap of thinking he has already made it just because of his promotion. That, more than anything, will stand him in good stead should he be cast into the Ferrari maelstrom.
If Leclerc does race a Ferrari in 2019, there will still be things to learn and there will be the odd mistake. But it's time to move on to the next learning curve.
Sometimes you've got to step up to the next level to have the chance to prove you can cut it there.
It's time. Leclerc is good enough, so he's definitely old enough.
